BERLIN (AP) – Britain’s decision to quit the European Union offers the bloc an opportunity to press ahead with greater military cooperation of the kind that London has long resisted, Germany’s defense minister said Wednesday.
Ursula von der Leyen, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Germany and France plan to discuss deepening military ties with other members of the EU, saying such efforts would be easier following Britain’s referendum last month to leave.
“Britain consistently blocked everything that had Europe written on it,” von der Leyen told reporters at the presentation of a major defense policy paper in Berlin, citing the example of a mobile hospital some countries had wanted to deploy to crisis regions.
“European Medical Command, even that would have been impossible because (of the word) ‘European,'” she said.
Germany already operates joint military units with France and the Netherlands on a bilateral basis.