Manfred Weber was re-elected head of the EPP. Doubt he will be Spitzenkandidat for the next EP election though.
Think that system is dead.
Anyway, in other EU affairs news, after Afghanistan many the "policy window" has opened up again the opportunity of creating a proto-EU Army. Defense ministers gathered in Slovenia to discuss the creation of an EU rapid deployment force of about 10,000 soldiers. Suffice to say the main debate within the Union on such matters is often reduced to Atlanticists vs those critical of tying EU foreign policy to the US and wanting the Gaullist "Third Power" option. But there are other factors at play here that have to do with the defense industries and their lobbying strategies. The Commission has already created a new DG for trying to make the EU procurement of arms more competitive, and it angered the Americans and the French who both are pulling hard in a tug of war between each other to secure contracts the old fashioned, noncompetitive way.
Funnily enough the EU army is actually one of the more popular measures amongst the EU electorate according to Euro-barometer.
(support has gone up since 2017)
In light of Russia-Ukraine I'd love to see those numbers now considering how much more likely a Russian conflict in the Baltics is to occur (both EU and NATO members).
Regardless, an EU army is going to be the sh**ts as long as the Bundeswehr remains at its current disgraceful levels and as a Canadian lifelong officer recently said to me "the only states in NATO that could field a division in a real conflict are the U.S., France, Poland, Turkey, and the UK". 3 of those 5 are not in the EU and per the previous post, the EU are pissed off with Poland, and some people that post on places like this forum say them and the Hungarians should be thrown out for being undemocratic. What does that leave, the French Army to defend the whole of Europe if to not be hypocrites you call in the American warmongers to come in and save the motherf#cking day yeah! That's not something you can fix in even 5 years. Throw in you have items like the Belgian Navy were recently kicked out of a NATO naval exercise due to being ill-prepared/incompetent, which is quite something when you think about it.
Thankfully Western and Central Europe are geographically secure. If they weren't, the region would be the Ottoman Empire circa 1910.
