I'm surprised that nobody mentioned Eurocorps, which describes itself as "A Force for the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance".
It's not exactly a secret:
No British units are "earmarked" for Eurocorps, yet:
but note this:
"Except for the French-German Brigade and the Staff of the Multinational Command Support Brigade (MNCS Bde) that are permanently under operational command of HQ Eurocorps, the national contributions remain under national command in peacetime. They become fully subordinated after Transfer of Authority has been decided by member states."
In other words, there IS a standing army which is "the spearhead" of this "Force for the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance", and it "has been permanently placed under the command of the Eurocorps for exercises and operations since the foundation of the latter in 1993", and it is "a bi-national major army unit that is marked by high mobility and high readiness and comprises about 5000 soldiers".
Furthermore:
"The Multinational Command Support Brigade in its new structure was created when the Eurocorps was transformed into a Rapid Reaction Corps."
Maybe Baroness Knight should put down the same question again, but referring to "the European Rapid Reaction Corps" instead of "European Rapid Reaction Force".
It's perfectly obvious that if you have "A force for the European Union", you can't forever have some member states saying "Sorry, we're neutral".
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