The first corps of the Eurocorps was the German-French brigade initiated by Helmut Kohl and François Mitterand to get the nucleus of a somewhat European military structure. If one takes a pragmatic approach—and I prefer the pragmatic approach—we have seen that there was a lot of improvement and good activities. Now the Eurocorps consists of military personnel from five countries: Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. We managed not to have only a symbolic unit.
The first time, the German military was not to be deployed anywhere where it was not encouraging for French officers to serve in the Eurocorps brigade, because they knew that this is not for their future and their career. But now Eurocorps is in a successful mission in Bosnia and in Kosovo. And we will have the Eurocorps in Afghanistan.
The pragmatic approach says that there are a lot of different approaches--for example, the consistency of the army. We have a conscript system in Germany. The French have given up and now are paying a lot of money to make the army more attractive to get enough service people. So I think we have to see that this is somehow.... Now there is a deployable headquarters that we will continue to work on, as we have on the European level now with Mr. Solana and his planning cell and the military cell. These are some first steps.
But I don't see that we will have a European army in due time. What we are not prepared to do is the attempt done three years ago. This was the so-called “chocolate summit”.
Just to tell the story about this name, I was in the State Department in Washington and I went with my partner for discussions in her office, and there was a large box of chocolates. I said, could it happen that the Belgians were here? And she said yes. So I said, maybe they asked for the chocolate summit.
Now, the chocolate summit was an idea to bring together the five countries of the Eurocorps into a European political defence entity. I think it is right that this is history and that we are clearly committed to have a joint European position. Eurocorps is one part of it, but there is no attempt to get five armies included as one and separate it from the other European.... We see NATO and the European Union as parts of an integration and not of a disintegration.
Concerning the A400M, I'm sorry, the actual price.... But if you are interested—