Claims from the leave side about moves to unify Europe’s armed forces are nothing more than fantasy

“EU army plans kept secret from voters,” was the front-page story in Friday’s Times. If the claim sounded familiar, that was because just two days earlier a retired British army commander, Major General Tim Ross, had claimed in the Daily Express that the EU was “moving inexorably towards full political union and all that comes with it”, including “unified armed forces”.

Alongside Brussels bans on bendy bananas and high-powered toasters, few subjects get leave campaigners as hot under the collar as the prospect of an EU army. On Friday Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, accused the remain side of lying about moves to create one, while the former defence secretary Liam Fox warned darkly that “Europe’s defence intentions are a dangerous fantasy” that risked cutting the UK off from the US, “our closest and most powerful ally”.

Is it true?

It is no secret that the EU has a common defence and security policy. Tony Blair practically invented it when he signed a defence cooperation agreement with Jacques Chirac in 1998.

Defence cooperation between member states was given more weight when the EU last updated its treaties, with a mutual defence clause introduced in the Lisbon treaty requiring member states to come to each other’s aid.

It is no secret, either, that some would like to see a full-blown EU army. The head of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said the EU needs one to show Russia it is serious about defending its values.

But is there a serious, imminent chance of this happening? No.

In practice, the EU currently runs six military missions, plus 11 civilian operations, mostly in the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa. But the troops serving in these missions are not under the banner of an EU army, but national forces. Britain’s Royal Navy commands the EU operation against Somali pirates; French troops are training infantry soldiers in Mali.

EU defence policy remains in the hands of European governments, not the EU executive. At the end of June the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, will outline a “global strategy on foreign and security policy”. That grandly titled paper will call for deeper EU security and military cooperation, an aim supported by many countries, including Germany.

But, contrary to reports, it will not propose an EU army. “There is absolutely no plan to set up an EU army with the global strategy,” a spokeswoman for Mogherini said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Times front page 27 May 2016 Photograph: The Times

Nick Witney, a former chief executive of the European Defence Agency, said no one took the idea of an EU army seriously.

“A meaningful EU army would involve a Slovak general ordering German men and women into harm’s way and nobody wants that,” he told the Guardian. “We don’t want that and neither do any of the other 27 member states.” He would like to see more defence cooperation – pooling assets and joint operations – although “today it is very difficult to find a pulse in European defence policy”.

Paddy Ashdown is also sceptical. The former Liberal Democrat leader, who led the EU’s mission in Bosnia, said the idea of an EU army was “nonsense” and “for the birds”.

But the EU, “arguably the world’s most successful instrument for soft power”, he said, would “have to start getting serious about hard defence”. By that, he stressed he did not mean military missions – “conflicts are a matter for Nato” – but “a pan-European integrated defence industry”, common procurement of battleships, aircraft and other military kit.

Is the US opposed to EU defence cooperation?

Far from it. One former US ambassador to Nato said the US would welcome a European army if it meant addressing the “sharp, steady decline in Europe’s capabilities”. Writing in the Financial Times in March, Ivo Daalder lamented that “Europe’s problem is not that it lacks an army. It is that it lacks a serious commitment to defence – national, European or transatlantic.”

This view was echoed by other observers, such as the former British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer.

Verdict

An EU army marching out to war under Brussels’ command is a fantasy shared by Eurosceptics and a small number of federalists. Europe will continue down the road of defence cooperation in a halting way, but an EU army is only for armchair generals.