A "European Army" is now a real possibility

[1805]

I assume it is taken as read that the UK would have an opt out

 

[kato]

However, I can't understand why they'd investigate a common EU army when surely the more feasible options would be a common EU naval task group? Primarily as you'd have thought this would have been a more felxible, useful tool then a large standing army?

Because the object of the study isn't to create a useful tool for the EU, its sole focus is on saving money. And as the land armies are - in comparison to the other forces - the one item primarily driven by personnel cost due to it's manpower intensity that's where they try to hook it.

As for the chances of this being taken up, the main ZEW author of the study has since left ZEW and currently works as the EU financial politics expert on the board of the German Wirtschaftsweise ([ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Council_of_Economic_Experts"]German Council of Economic Experts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]). Hence why this study gets mainstream exposure at all.

P.S.: What's up with those wikipedia link conversions there anyway?