I was under the impression that Spain wasn’t too interested in the conflicts to the East and the North of the EU, but that was wrong apparently. Good.
I see how you get that impression, considering they rank low both in military spending and financial assistance to Ukraine.
One big stumbling block is the relationship with Turkey. Is the EU ready to defend Greece and Cyprus the way everyone is talking about defending the Baltics and other Eastern flank countries from Russia?
If not, Greece and Cyprus will just keep going down the existing path of cooperation with Israel, the UAE, and the USA, hoping to counterbalance Erdogan’s aggression. This is a serious weak spot in any kind of European move for strategic independence.
Turkish adventurism is a ticking time bomb in the security architecture of Europe and nobody wants to talk or do anything about it except France.
This is the idea of a Multi-Speed Europe. This is nothing new, but voices haven’t been that loud (except for these moments when Angela Merkel floated the idea rather vaguely and called it “Europe of two speeds”.
This is not limited to military cooperation but also extends to economic and societal integrations. In reality, we already do have these cooperations especially at border regions where enablements of Schengen hits the people directly. Why should these cooperations stop at border regions, for example? The eurozone ist yet another example of a different Europe.