From the Financial Times:  In recent months, senior figures in the British and French defence establishments – politicians, military chiefs, defence industrialists, think-tankers – have been talking about the need to step up co-operation amid significant budgetary pressures and a fear that the US may be turning away from Europe…

France recently agreed a defence budget that will rise by only 1 per cent a year in real terms between 2012 and 2025. The British, whose forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been overstretched since 2003, are immersed arguably in a bigger crisis. Whichever party wins the British general election – expected in early May – might have to cut defence spending by up to 15 per cent over the next six years, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank. The UK Ministry of Defence therefore recently published a policy paper in which it asked whether it could use its partnership with France to improve existing capabilities…

Lord Robertson, former Nato secretary-general and UK defence secretary at the St Malo summit, puts the prospects for the two countries in blunt terms. “We are in a situation where both countries have been brought to the point of questioning some of the fundamentals of their defence capability. So we need to build true mutual dependency and work out the fundamentals of what they want to achieve…”

“If the British and French are going to share assets like carriers, there will have to be far deeper political co-operation to avoid major arguments when one country wants to deploy those assets,” says Lord Wallace, a Liberal Democrat member of the upper house of parliament. “That means we’ve got to engage far more directly with our media to explain why some of this sovereignty has to be given up.” (photo: Financial Times)

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