EU to move toward common army, Germany says
Pastor Dale Morgan
EU to move toward common army, Germany says*
Reuters
Friday, March 23, 2007; 4:48 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union moving toward forming a common
army, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview
published on Friday.
Asked how she saw the EU developing in the next 50 years, Merkel told
daily newspaper Bild: "In the EU itself we must come closer to a common
European army."
Germany holds the EU's rotating presidency for the first half of this year.
Last year, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said his country wanted a new
100,000-strong European Union army created to work with NATO in trouble
spots in the world or to defend Europe.
Merkel is hosting a summit this weekend in Berlin where the bloc will
celebrate its 50th anniversary and unveil a declaration setting out its
values and achievements.
Merkel hopes the so-called "Berlin Declaration" will be a springboard
for her revival of the European constitution, rejected by French and
Dutch voters in 2005.
Merkel told Bild the EU's 27 member states often spent too long
grappling with issues under the bloc's existing structure.
"To change that, we need the EU constitution, which suits the decision
mechanism of the larger EU," she said.
Germany has vowed to present a "road map" for relaunching the
constitution at a June EU summit in Brussels, with a view to getting a
new document ratified by mid-2009.