The French government will in June launch a deployable European military crisis force outside of existing European Union efforts, French Defence Ministry sources said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
Paris has been in touch with a dozen countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Denmark, about the initiative, holding a working group to outline the idea in March.
The idea aims to bring together European countries with a military capacity and political desire to collaborate on planning, carry out joint analyses of emerging crises and to react to them quickly.
“It would not be within the European Union and would allow countries outside it, like Britain, to be part of it,” said one source.
French president Emmanuel Macron broadly outlined the idea to have a rapid European intervention force by the end of the decade during a landmark speech on Europe last September.
While some EU tactical interventional groups exist in principle, so far they have never been used.
The sources declined to name the countries that would be at a launch ceremony in Paris in June, but said it did not mean countries could not join it a later stage.
Germany, which has a historical resistance to military missions that included the use of force, in March appeared to back the plan given the need for a better European cooperation to crises.
However, it has previously emphasized the force should be folded into the new Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) defense pact being set up between EU governments. French officials insist the new initiative will not cannibalize PESCO.
French defence minister Florence Parly will discuss the project with her German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday in Paris.