Nuno Melo Doubles Down Against the European Army in Sunday JN/TSF Interview — Defence Minister Anchors Portuguese Posture in NATO as Madrid Lobbies for a Continental Force

Portuguese Defence Minister Nuno Melo used a joint Sunday interview with the Jornal de Notícias daily and the TSF rádio (TSF radio) to restate his opposition to the creation of a European army and re-anchor Lisbon's posture in the Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte (NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Speaking on 7 June 2026, Melo told both outlets that "a European defence is not equally effective with or without the United States" — a clean restatement of the Atlanticist line he has carried since his European Parliament years.

The remarks land in the middle of a renewed continental debate. The Spanish government has been pushing for a European army to be stood up "immediately, not in ten years," framing the move as a hedge against deteriorating relations with Washington. That proposal was publicly waved off this spring by the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, who called the idea illusory and argued the focus should be on reinforcing the armed forces of individual member states instead. Melo's Sunday interview slots Lisbon firmly into the Kallas camp rather than the Madrid one.

NATO as the anchor

Asked about the strain between European NATO members and the Trump administration, the minister drew an explicit line between US executive politics and the alliance frame: "I don't confuse a country's administration with that country and its people. Administrations are transitory." That formula — common to several smaller NATO capitals this year — lets Lisbon keep its alliance commitments unchanged while still publicly disagreeing with specific White House moves.

Melo also leaned on the historical case. "Never has continental Europe had as long a permanent stretch of peace as the one we have measured since the end of the Second World War, also because of NATO," he said, with the obvious exception of the conflict in Ukraine. NATO, he added, "as an organisation of deterrence and defence, has been doing its job very well — and doing it well also because of this Atlanticist option, joining one side of the Atlantic to the other with the United States in the equation."

The European pillar, not a European army

The minister had already laid this position out on 12 May during a meeting of EU defence ministers in Brussels, telling reporters then that he is "tendentially against the idea of a European army" while supporting closer EU-level articulation of "fundamental aspects of a common defence." The substance has not moved. What has shifted is the political backdrop: Madrid's renewed push and the wider Spanish framing of Trump-era Washington as an unreliable partner have raised the temperature inside EU defence forums.

Melo's preferred frame remains "reinforcing the European pillar of NATO defence" — better conditions for serving personnel, modernisation of infrastructure and equipment, and the capacity to deliver the missions Portugal is asked to run inside and outside the alliance area. That language tracks the Lei de Programação Militar (LPM, Military Programming Law) framing the current investment cycle and keeps Portuguese commitments inside the NATO 2% GDP target rather than under a separate EU budget line.

What to watch next

The next pressure points are the June and July EU defence ministers' meetings and the NATO summit in The Hague. Lisbon's vote on any joint declaration carrying European-army language is now flagged in advance — and Spain's bilateral lobbying inside southern Europe will likely move to Italy and Greece, which have stayed closer to the middle of the road than Portugal has.