Navy

Here's A Crazy Idea: A European Union Aircraft Carrier

Maybe Germany is planning revenge for Brexit by sinking British merchant ships in the North Atlantic again.

Because otherwise, a top German politician’s call for a European Union aircraft carrier doesn’t make much sense.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, president of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and a likely successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, created a stir when she advocated that European nations work together to build a carrier.

“Germany and France are already working together on the project of a European future combat aircraft,” she wrote in an essay in the German newspaper Die Welt (English translation here ). “The next step could be the start of the symbolic project of building a common European aircraft carrier to express the global role of the European Union as a power ensuring security and peace.”

Merkel seemed to endorse the idea. "It's right and good that we have such equipment on the European side, and I'm happy to work on it."

Ironically, Kramp-Karrenbauer was actually rejecting a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for tighter European integration. “There is no version of a European superstate which can live up to the goal of a Europe made up of sovereign member states, and able to take action,” she wrote.