MOSCOW (Sputnik) – On Wednesday, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that Germany and France are committed to press forward with a proposal to strengthen European defense policy amid the Britain's vote to leave the union.
"A European army is a long-term goal of the social democracy. But that will be far in the future. However, it is not a substitution for NATO," Arnold said.
The first initiative to create a pan-European army was proposed by French Prime Minister Rene Pleven in 1950 and two years later Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany singed the treaty founding European Defence Community, which, however, never went into effect. Since that time despite increasing cooperation in the military sphere the European countries failed to establish common armed forces.
