Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the comment by German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen in an interview with Deutschlandfunk that a European army is "the future"; and what is their assessment of the impact of that comment, together with those by other German leaders and the President of the European Commission, on the credibility of NATO.

We have always been clear that defence is a national, not an EU, responsibility and that there is no prospect of that position changing and therefore no prospect of a European army. The Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), made clear NATO’s primacy in European Defence at the December 2013 European Council and we will continue to underline this with EU Partners and Institutions as we look towards the June European Council stocktake on CSDP.

NATO is the bedrock of the UK’s defence and a leading instrument of our national security. The NATO Summit in Wales showed that the Alliance is strong and united, reaffirming the centrality of NATO to European and global security.