Creating a unified European Union army outside NATO could cause serious confusion in military command and undermine the ability of European countries to respond effectively to an attack, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned during a speech at Tallinn University of Technology.

Rutte argued that establishing European military structures parallel to NATO would disrupt the alliance’s existing system of coordination. NATO has already assigned specific responsibilities to individual member states and military formations, making a separate EU command structure entirely unnecessary.

As an example, he pointed to the German-Dutch Army Corps, which is designated under NATO defense plans to provide assistance in a particular part of the alliance’s territory if a threat emerges. Other member states and military units have similarly defined responsibilities.

Introducing an independent European army operating outside NATO’s established command system would complicate these arrangements. In the event of an attack, allied countries could be forced to spend weeks determining which military structures were responsible for particular tasks.

The NATO chief stressed that the alliance does not oppose European defense cooperation itself. However, it rejects the duplication of existing NATO functions and the establishment of separate EU military structures operating independently of the alliance.

Rutte also identified national sovereignty as a fundamental obstacle to creating a single European army.

A genuinely unified European military force would require EU member states to give up their national armed forces and surrender their sovereign responsibility for organizing and maintaining them.

He compared this model with the United States, where individual states such as New York and Michigan do not maintain separate armies or navies equivalent to the country’s federal armed forces.

Under such an arrangement, Estonia, the Netherlands and other European countries would have to transfer responsibility for their armed forces from national governments to a common European authority.

Rutte expressed confidence that European governments would not agree to relinquish that degree of national military sovereignty.