Commissario per la difesa europea: “Un attacco a un membro dell’UE e della NATO è una minaccia molto reale” “

Very interesting article. He’s tremendously well suited for this role too. 
What I like most:

“But definitely we shall also need to come to the European security architecture, including but not limited to Article 42. And here, if you read my mission letter – the programme which the Commission president tasked me to carry out – it says that the White Paper was the first task, but in the longer term, the mission letter says: Europe needs to be able to defend itself”

“And then the next sentence of the mission letter says: if Europe needs to take care of its own defence, then **there is a need for a European security architecture, and for that weapons are not enough: you need to have some kind of clear institutional arrangement**.
It’s not against NATO, but nevertheless, we need to have that capacity.
And my mission letter requires the *creation of a true European defence union*, which means that really we are moving into a much more integrated way of doing defence in Europe. And this will demand a lot of thinking and discussions about how to do it.”
Which to me means, with or without US, we’re moving towards a strong collective European Defence – that which will include Ukraine.