he said at a Swedish security conference on Sunday<\/a>. \u201cFifty state defence policies and defense budgets on the states level, instead of a single federal defense policy and budget?\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cIf our answer is\u00a0‘no,\u2019 [the] USA would not be stronger, then \u2014 what are we waiting for?\u201d<\/p>\n
Kubilius said Europe’s defense readiness depends on three pillars: more investment in production capacity; institutions that are prepared and organized; and the political will to deter and, if needed, fight.<\/p>\n
Merely increasing funding for Europe\u2019s existing defense setup won\u2019t meet these requirements, he said, in part because of a lack of unity.<\/p>\n
“We need to start to invest our money in such a way, that we would be able to fight as Europe, not just as collection of 27 national\u00a0\u2018bonsai armies\u2019,\u201d he said, borrowing a phrase from former EU High Representative Josep Borrell.<\/p>\n
Europe could instead create \u2014 “as Jean-Claude Juncker, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel already proposed 10 years ago” a powerful, standing\u00a0\u201cEuropean military force\u201d of 100,000 troops, he said.<\/p>\n
To help solve the issue of political will, Kubilius wants to establish a European Security Council. The idea has been talked up by French President Macron and former German Chancellor Merkel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe European Security Council could be composed of key permanent members, along with several rotational members, including the member state with the Council presidency,\u201d said Kubilius. \u201cPlus the leadership of the EU: Commission and Council presidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed security council should also include the United Kingdom, Kubilius said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn total around 10-12 members, with the task to discuss the most important issues in defense, some of which I just mentioned before,\u201d Kubilius said. \u201cAnd not only discussing, but also swiftly preparing important decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European Union Defense Commissioner, Andrius Kubilius has proposed that the EU create its own 100,000 strong standing army and he wants the UK to participate <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":180462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321547,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321546\/revisions\/321547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/180462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}