Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-13-Speech-3-282"
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"en.20050413.20.3-282"2
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"Mr President, if you take the view that the European Union should evolve into some sort of integrated European State, then it is both logical and necessary that it should have its own currency, its own police and judicial system, its own diplomatic representation, its own army and defence budget and all the rest of the panoply of statehood brought together under the legal framework of a constitution.
The two reports before us today derive their inspiration precisely from this impulse. I have to say that British Conservatives take a rather different view. We are fundamentally opposed to further European political integration. In fact, we would seek to unwind and repatriate many of the excessive powers that Brussels has accrued. Not surprisingly, therefore, we oppose the very idea of a European constitution as well as its detailed ingredients.
The reports focus particularly on security and defence policy. They seek to enhance the EU’s military credentials by distorting the nature and role of NATO and then sidelining that organisation while wastefully duplicating its structures, seeking to displace the nations as actors in the transatlantic security relationship while claiming ownership of their capabilities, and subscribing to misplaced ideas of socially engineering our armed forces.
I do not believe that the European nations have strategic security interests that should be separated from those of its transatlantic and other allies. There may be times when Europeans should bear primary responsibility for provision of military forces in their own region. That is precisely what has happened in the past ten years or more in the former Yugoslavia, where it is mere sleight of hand to imply that the EUFOR military operation in Bosnia is fundamentally different to that which was there before. Of the 7 000 troops in NATO’s SFOR, over 6 000 were European. It is dishonest, therefore, to pretend that the EU is contributing to any enhancement of security when most of its Member States are reducing rather than increasing their defence expenditure and the EU itself is merely replicating the planning, decision-making and command and control systems of the highly successful organisation that is NATO."@en1
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