The European Commission has called for EU "political will" to send joint forces into combat in a "hyper-competitive" world.
EU countries have redoubled interest in fielding joint "battlegroups" after the US recently made Europe look impotent in the Afghanistan crisis.
But EU battlegroups have existed on paper for 16 years without ever being sent into action, commission chief Ursula von der Leyen noted in Strasbourg on Wednesday (15 September).
"In the last weeks, there hav...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.