French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu stated that France wants to create a joint European rapid-response force by 2025.

Le Monde reported on this.

“This is a key issue (…) on which I hope we can come to a conclusion next year, being very reactive and very fast,” Lecornu said.

Previously, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe should create a rapid response force of up to 5,000 troops that can be rapidly deployed in a hostile environment to evacuate European citizens.

“There are many crises in which NATO does not have competence and in which France often carries out operations on its own. We must be able (…) to create [this force] very quickly to ensure the security of European citizens, Portuguese, Italian, German and French citizens,” the French Defense Minister said.

Lecorne gave the example of the evacuation from Sudan, when France alone evacuated 1,000 people, of whom 200-250 were French citizens.

According to the French Minister of Defense, such a burden should be shared by Europe.

Militarnyi previously reported that French President Emmanuel Macron calls for the creation of a third European route between the United States and China.

According to him, Europe is doomed if it does not take bold actions to fight the protectionism of the USA and China.

He noted that Europe must have been resilient amid serious geopolitical threats from authoritarian regimes and had its own appropriate independence.

Macron noted that “the era of basing European production in China, of delegating our defense to the U.S., and of getting our energy from Russia is over.”

The French President accused both the U.S. and China of failing to respect the global trade rules due to massive subsidies to their economies.