General view of a EU Defense Ministers council meeting in Brussels, Belgium, May 18, 2017 | Olivier Hoslet/EPA EU pushes joint defense fund Now that the UK is leaving the bloc, the others want greater defense integration.

EU countries Thursday approved the creation of a fund for joint military projects as part of a push for greater integration on defense, partly spurred on by Brexit.

At a meeting of national defense ministers in Brussels, they also agreed that the fund — to be known as the Cooperative Financial Mechanism — will be run by the European Defence Agency. No numbers have yet been attributed to the fund.

At least 19 countries — including France, Germany, Italy and Spain — will start talks on the fund next month and it could be up and running sometime next year.

Member countries will contribute on a voluntary basis and the aim is “to incentivize defense cooperation by overcoming the lack of budgetary synchronization” between EU nations.

The fund is part of efforts, driven mainly by Germany and France, to push ahead with defense integration now that the Britain is leaving the bloc. The U.K. has been skeptical of further military integration of the bloc.

Thursday's talks also took place a week before U.S President Donald Trump, who has pushed Europe to take on a greater role in its own security, comes to Brussels for a NATO summit.

“At present, there has been positive interest [for the fund] by 19 member states,” said a senior EU official, adding that the fund "will remain in the hands of member states, all of them can participate in the negotiations and then each can decide to remain or not."

The fund will operate in a similar way to the European Stability Mechanism — the eurozone's permanent bailout fund — the official said.

The push for defense integration was at the center of Thursday's meeting of national defense ministers. They also discussed the first step in the use of a so-called “permanent structured cooperation,” or Pesco, that allows European nations willing to engage in greater military cooperation to do so without waiting for the consensus of the others.