With France about to rejoin Nato's military command and a more sympathetic Administration in Washington, the European Union will at last be able to get on with building an army. That sums up the hope and fear of some in the opposing camps on defence - federal-minded Europeans and Atlanticists.

President Sarkozy is selling France's full return to the Atlantic fold as a way of exerting new influence and allaying suspicion over its longstanding project for a European defence. France has been campaigning since the 1990s for this autonomous “pillar” within Nato, with mixed support from Germany and cautious co-operation from Britain. The EU has carried out 23 military missions since 2003, from Kosovo to current anti-pirate patrols in the Red Sea. Twenty-one EU states are part of the 26-member Nato alliance.

The qualms of the US, Britain and the newer members from the east have, however, prevented it creating the headquarters and common procurement agency that would give the European army substance.

Mr Sarkozy often says that there is no competition between Nato and the EU, and the Obama Administration also says that it wants Europe to take more responsibility for its own defence. Mr Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, signed a newspaper article last month saying: “We are convinced that it is in our interest to make European integration and the Atlantic partnership the two faces of the same security policy.”

French officials recognise that France's return to the command has come with no American promises on a more autonomous European defence, and that Britain and the former Eastern Bloc members remain hostile to any move that could loosen the US commitment to the Continent. There is also no stomach for the big rise in spending that a serious EU defence system would require. Le Monde said an EU defence pillar had “not advanced one iota because the Americans have always refused it and there is no European ambition to achieve it.”

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