USA warns against greater military EU cooperation

The US has warned that greater military co-operation between EU countries would be a “dramatic reversal” of three decades of transatlantic defence integration, in the latest sign of the fraying relationship between Washington and Brussels, The Financial Times reports.

The report refers to a letter seen by the newspaper, where Washington threatened retaliation if the Europeans pressed ahead with rules that it said would restrict the involvement of US companies in pan-European military projects.

The correspondence was sent this month to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s top diplomat, by Ellen Lord, US under secretary of defence, and Andrea Thompson, under secretary of state. It said that Washington was “deeply concerned” that approval of the rules for the European Defence Fund and the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or Pesco, launched in 2017 to plug gaps in Europe’s military power, would “produce duplication, non-interoperable military systems, diversion of scarce defence resources and unnecessary competition between Nato and the EU”.

Via FT 

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