Positon Paper of the United Kingdom for the European Council 1-6 May 2017 I. EUROPEAN DEFENCE FUND

The UK stressed a lot that we are pragmatic about cooperating with ‘Europe’ on all fronts, and is even willing to engage on foreign policy, security and defence matters when British interests are served. This is widely considered the best way forward, also because institutional and diplomatic modalities already allow third states to participate (under certain conditions) in intra-EU policy processes. Although the UK is open to allowing pragmatic ties with CSDP initiatives (including missions and operations), there is a clear preference for dev...