Anyone els think the whole report is BS?
For those who don't know the final report is backed by the foreign ministers of 11 EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain), and is basically a "plan" for a federal European "country", including a future establishment of a European Army.
How the heck would they ever get that to work, there is so many conflicting areas here, member states need to keep their sovereignty when it comes to the military. Imagine the discussion in a future European parliament in case something would come up, on one hand you would have Germany which always tries to avoid conflicts on the other hand you would have the likes of France or the UK which are much more expeditionary, at least if one goes by modern times. For example look at the EU mandate for EU NAVFOR, France, UK and a few others wants a more aggressive mandate but Germany and a couple of others wants to go easy, so as always when it comes to the EU we end up with something inbetween, which isn't always bad, but it isn't always the best either, I simply can't see how it would ever work out when you got countries with conflicting opinions, we always end up with some kind of compromise that rarely is the optimal solution.
Sure there could be some advantages, better interoperability and more streamlined forces, more capital for R&D, maybe more efficient and cost effective procurement of equipment etc... but nothing stops countries from working together on big projects as it is, Eurofighter for example.
For those who want to be part of a military alliance there is already NATO.
I guess the combined forces would be able of more power projection as well, but again, NATO is there for those who want part of it.
If one plays with the idea of hypothetically combined EU military this is what it would look like currently.
European military budget: €194 billion, 1.6% of European Unions GDP
European military personnel: 1,695,122(active), 2,614,491(reserve), 755,034(paramilitary), 5,064,647(total), around 70,000 currently deployed
European Air Forces: 2012 estimated, 2,115 serviceable combat aircrafts(fighter aircraft and ground-attack aircraft) 268 Eurofighter, 364 Tornado, 92 Rafale, 211 Mirage 2000, 39 Mirage F1, 162 JAS Gripen, 415 F-16, 148 F/A-18, 425 others. + 569 transport, tanker and air-lift aircraft.
European Naval Forces: 600 warships, that number does not include support ships of any kind. 6 aircraft carriers, (the largest is the Charles de Gaulle), 58 submarines, 111 major surface warships(destroyers/frigates), 58 corvettes, 18 amphibious assault ship, etc.
European Land Forces: No idea.