Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has reiterated his country’s position against a unified military
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has dismissed Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s suggestion for an “army of Europe.” Poland has consistently rejected the idea of a unified EU military, and has strongly supported the US keeping its dominant role in security on the continent.
“I think we should be careful with this term because different people understand different things. If you understand by it the unification of national armies, it will not happen,” Sikorski told state news channel TVP World on Saturday. He added that strengthening the bloc’s defense component should complement US-led NATO efforts, not replace them.
Zelensky called for the creation of a unified EU force at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, a day after US Vice President J.D. Vance levelled heavy criticism at European nations. Vance showed that “decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” Zelensky said.
Some 22 EU states are currently members of NATO, with the US-led pact effectively determining security policy on the continent since the start of the Cold War. However, several EU leaders have in the past floated the idea of pooling their militaries into a common force independent of the US.
Then Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said in November 2023 that “any competition between [NATO] and the EU when it comes to security is a very bad thing,” and that Warsaw had chosen a close partnership with the US over “some imaginary European army.” The country has significantly bolstered its military collaboration with Washington in recent years. Warsaw purchased $10 billion worth of HIMARS rocket artillery systems, secured a $2 billion loan from the US for military modernization, and now hosts its first permanent US base in Poznan.
Before the Ukraine conflict, French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among the most vocal advocates of establishing an EU army. In 2019, Macron described NATO as “brain dead” and urged European leaders to pursue a policy of “strategic autonomy” from Washington.
Italy voiced the idea of a joint military last January. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has argued that the bloc cannot have a credible foreign policy without a joint military.
The conflict in Ukraine has apparently put a damper on such discussion. Macron has shifted his rhetoric on NATO and now supports the expansion of the US-led alliance. Merkel’s replacement, Olaf Scholz, still speaks of the need for “a more sovereign… European Union,” but has remained silent on the idea of building what Merkel called “a real, true European army.”
When talk of an independent European force first surfaced two decades ago, then US Secretary of Defense William Cohen called the idea “a threat to the very existence of NATO.”
