Italian Foreign Minister: The EU Should Create Its Own Army

To conduct an effective European foreign policy.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani believes that the European Union should create its own army if it wants to play a role in maintaining peace and preventing conflicts. He said this in an interview with La Stampa.

“If we want to be peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military. And this is a fundamental precondition to be able to have an effective European foreign policy. In a world with powerful players like the United States, China, India, Russia - with crises from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific - Italian, German, French or Slovenian citizens can only be protected by something that already exists, namely the European Union,” Tajani said, according to Reuters.

"Therefore, defence and the common army should become a real fact. And this cannot be postponed," the minister added.

Tajani also suggested that the European Union should reconsider its structure and instead of two posts – the president of the European Council and the president of the European Commission – leave one.

Minister Tajani is the leader of the Forza Italia party, founded by Silvio Berlusconi. In Italy's last election, it won 45 seats as part of a centre-right coalition led by the Brothers of Italy party and Giorgia Meloni.

Proposals to create a common armed force of the European Union have been circulating for a long time, but since 2021, European officials have begun to talk about plans to create an EU military force more than over the past eight years.