If Juncker’s proposals are enacted, “it truly will be a quantum leap in European Union defense cooperation”, Terlikowski said.
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A European Defence Fund would stimulate military research and development, he said.
Juncker meanwhile proposed doubling the size of his signature investment plan to $708bn, and announced measures to help young people hit by the eurozone debt crisis.
Marine Le Pen, French far-right leader, said Juncker had “refused to listen to the huge desire of European people to get their independence back”.
The president of the European Commission has claimed 40 years of “lies” were responsible for Britons deciding to leave the EU.
Twenty-two of the EU’s 28-member states are also members of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance, headquartered in Brussels, but Juncker insisted the bloc’s military ambitions would not undercut this key relationship.
It cuts to the core of the power struggle within the European Union, as the 27 European Union leaders, minus Britain’s Theresa May, meet in Bratislava on Friday, looking for ways to move forward.
“There can be no a la carte access to the single market”, he said of British hopes to cut immigration and keep free trade. “We will be very strict in terms of who can cross our borders and this is something that we are looking to implement by the end of the year”, he said in his annual policy speech.
Estimates from the organisation suggest this could boost GDP across the European Union by an extra €910 billion, as well as create 1.3 million new jobs by 2025.
The EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which took effect in 2009, foresaw a mechanism for permanent defense cooperation inside the bloc, but squabbles among member states have prevented the topic from being broached at meetings of EU leaders, said Marcin Terlikowski, a European security expert at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.
And also by the end of the decade, Juncker asserted that every nation in the European Union should have at least one city (most likely the capital, we guess) which offers 5G mobile coverage.
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He proposed a doubling of the European Union investment fund to spur economic growth, fresh measures to tackle youth unemployment and cited an European Union initiative to eliminate roaming charges on cell phones that he said will be proposed next week. In a proposed reform of its telecommunications regulations, it also envisages making affordable broadband Internet access part of the universal service obligation for telecommunications operators.
