German gov't supports EU army

German government officials expressed their supports to the creation of a European army on Monday, but insisted that such a target could not be reached in a near future.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed "a stronger and deeper military cooperation in Europe", said her deputy spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz in a press conference in Berlin, in response to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's call over the weekend for creating a European Union (EU) army.

Juncker said in an interview with German media on Sunday that such an army would enable Europe to "build a common foreign and security policy and jointly assume the responsibilities of Europe in the world".

Wirtz said, however, the European army was "a future project" and there was no current schedule for its creation.

The view was shared by Ingo Gerhartz, the deputy spokesman of the German Defence Ministry, who said in the same press conference that a European army was seen as a long-term goal, and EU member states were "on the way there".

In an interview with German Tagesspiegel newspaper on Monday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also said that a European army is a "major political concern and part of the party program" of his Social Democratic Party, the coalition partner of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Endit