The Holy Roman Empire has very little do do with what is "the west", even within Europe. Spain, Poland, Portugal the UK were not part of it and only a small par

The Holy Roman Empire has very little do do with what is "the west", even within Europe. Spain, Poland, Portugal the UK were not part of it and only a small part of France was. France is (in my view) clearly significantly part of "the west" than many areas formerly part of the HRE. Malta is also constitutionally required to be neutral, and as a result did not enter the EU's PESCO. Austria takes a rather more "flexible" view of its Neutrality than Malta does, and so joined PESCO. Note that third countries can participate in PESCO, and those which have requested to join are: Canada, Norway, the USA, the UK and Turkey. This is pretty clearly not a neutral organisation. Austria's neutrality may be more baked into law than Switzerland's is, but it is clearly not as significant as Malta's.