Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-10-Speech-3-131"
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"en.20020410.4.3-131"2
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"I speak in my capacity as Secretary of the SOS Democracy Group to explain our opposition to the two resolutions on defence on which the Chamber has just voted.
There is a range of views in this House about the military needs of the continent. However one thing that ought to be uncontroversial is that the defence of Europe should be primarily governed by strategic rather than political considerations. Yet this is the opposite of what is proposed in these resolutions. The ESDP, and specifically the Rapid Reaction Force, does not extend Europe's defence capability by one more soldier or one more bullet. All it does is to transfer the line of command away from NATO in the national capitals towards the EU's new politico-military structures. At best this is a pointless and expensive exercise in duplication, at worst it leaves Europe weaker by cutting its links with the one NATO partner able to supply air- and sea-lift capability, advanced communication satellites and accurate missiles.
Again and again European defence ministers, including British ones, have been prepared to disregard the advice of their own generals in order to pursue joint European projects. Perhaps the supreme example of this thinking is the Eurofighter, an aeroplane which is becoming operative years late, billions of euros over budget, and which is effectively already obsolete.
After all, in an age in which we are increasingly having to act out of area, what we surely need is an aircraft capable of operating from rough local airfields with low technological requirements for spare parts, capable of buddy refuelling and with a long loiter time. What we are instead getting is a plane conceived in the early 1980s as a way to defend the skies of central Europe against a massed attack by Russian MiGs. These two resolutions have nothing to do with making Europe more secure and everything to do with making it more integrated as an end in itself. Hence our opposition."@en1
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