PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) – The French government will in June launch a deployable European military crisis force outside of existing European Union efforts, French Defence Ministry sources said on Wednesday.
Paris has been in touch with a dozen countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Denmark, about the initiative, holding a working group to outline the idea in March.
The idea aims to bring together European countries with a military capacity and political desire to collaborate on planning, carry out joint analyses of emerging crises and to react to them quickly.
“It would not be within the European Union and would allow countries outside it, like Britain, to be part of it,” said one source.
French President Emmanuel Macron broadly outlined the idea to have a rapid European intervention force by the end of the decade during a landmark speech on Europe last September.
While some EU tactical interventional groups exist in principle, so far they have never been used.
The sources declined to name the countries that would be at a launch ceremony in…
