European joint force is back on the EU agenda after Defence and Space Commissioner (in practice, the EU executive’s defence minister) Andrius Kubilius called for a standing European military force of 100,000 troops during a speech in Sweden on Sunday. The proposal comes amid renewed uncertainty about the USA’s long-term commitment to European security and rising concern over Russia’s military threat.
What Kubilius is proposing: 100,000 troops under a European flag
Kubilius argued that EU countries should consider building a permanent, combined force able to protect the continent and, in the long run, reduce reliance on the roughly 100,000 American troops stationed in Europe.
His message was framed around a strategic question: if Washington downscales its presence or shifts priorities, what European capability can replace the USA’s standing military backbone on the continent?
A “European Security Council” to speed up decisions
Alongside the force proposal, Kubilius suggested creating a European Security Council to help Europe take faster decisions on defence and crisis management.
He floated a structure with 10–12 members, combining a core of permanent members and rotating seats, and explicitly mentioned that it could include key European powers outside the EU, such as the United Kingdom.
Why the idea is returning now: Trump, Greenland and strategic uncertainty
The political context is central to Kubilius’ intervention. President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised doubts about the USA’s commitment to NATO, while also triggering tensions with European allies through statements about Greenland—an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark and part of the Euro-Atlantic security space.
For many European governments, this uncertainty reinforces a long-running argument: Europe must be able to act militarily even when the USA is unwilling or distracted, including in crises that do not fit neatly into NATO’s deterrence posture.
How this fits into existing EU defence tools
The EU already has mechanisms under its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), but most of them remain limited by design:
- The Strategic Compass foresees an EU Rapid Deployment Capacity of up to 5,000 troops for crisis-response scenarios.
- Several industrial and procurement initiatives aim to get Europe to spend more, spend better and spend European, strengthening the European defence industrial base.
Kubilius’ 100,000-troop idea is a different scale: it implies not only deployments abroad, but a standing force for Europe’s own security, with permanent readiness, command arrangements, and sustainable funding.
The main obstacle: sovereignty, command and the NATO question
Calls for a European force have circulated for decades, but they have repeatedly run into the same political barrier: many EU member states remain reluctant to cede control over their armed forces.
Any credible 100,000-strong formation would require:
- agreed command-and-control structures and rules of engagement;
- long-term financing and a clear link between EU and national budgets;
- interoperability, training standards, and a deployment mandate that works across very different strategic cultures;
- a politically stable division of labour with NATO, which remains the foundation of collective defence for most EU countries.
What comes next for European defence policy
Kubilius’ proposal is not a legislative plan, but it signals how the EU executive is pushing the debate beyond incremental steps. The next test will be whether major member states are ready to discuss institutional defence readiness—not just procurement and industrial policy, but also the political authority and military structures needed to deploy at scale.
For Nordic and Baltic countries, the question is especially concrete: security policy is increasingly shaped by the Baltic Sea region, the Arctic, and the long-term trajectory of Russian military power. Whether a European joint force becomes a realistic option will depend on whether EU governments can reconcile national sovereignty with the demand for faster, collective action in an uncertain transatlantic environment.
