Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-272"
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"en.20061115.19.3-272"2
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".
Mr President, the Greens appear to be learning. The chairman of the security and defence sub-committee has produced a report on military policy in the EU. The report has now been wrapped up in social democratic cotton wool, its language – originally unmistakeable – robbed of its punch. It is evident that no place could be found for the statement in the draft to the effect that the EU ought, under certain conditions, to be open to the concept of pre-emptive warfare; that sort of talk was, no doubt, too plain.
The report makes the mistakes usually associated with a militarised EU foreign policy. It incorporates a risk analysis of the European Security Strategy, according to which the principal threats faced by the European Union and its citizens are international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, failed states and organised crime.
What about poverty, hunger and social inequality? The report speaks up for military border surveillance – aimed against whom, I wonder? – and for the use of military means to secure access to resources. The EU wants to develop a strategic partnership with NATO; the report ‘welcomes NATO's increasing capability of playing a role in out-of-theatre operations’ – and that in a report from the European Parliament! It also calls for a considerable strengthening of Europe’s operational capacities, including air and sea transport, and the conflation of civilian and military is taken still further.
The report amounts to a catalogue of demands aimed at the further militarisation of the European Union – demanding, among other things, more money for crisis operations, which will have to be found from the Community budget, which means new financial arrangements. After the games played on us with Athena, what is now being proposed is the introduction of a virtual military budget.
We all know that the Treaty of Nice, quite rightly, outlaws any freestanding military budget for the EU; that is why attempts are being made to resurrect the deceased EU constitutional treaty, for as it says, 'stresses the importance of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, which will bring about major progress towards a Security and Defence Union'. It is for precisely that reason that we are opposed to this Constitutional Treaty for the EU. What is being called for here is the EU as a military union.
There are those for whom making the EU a military union is a goal, and paragraphs 51 and 52 of this report read like their wish list, with new weaponry and more money to buy it and enable the EU to be a military global player around the world. That is the wrong way to go about things. The EU is currently involved in at least 11 military and police operations around the world, and more are in the pipeline; the list now includes Afghanistan, where NATO troops are killing more and more civilians, and now the EU wants to join in the carnage as soon as possible, when what is needed – and now! – is for the troops to be brought home from Afghanistan and elsewhere. The European Union has no need of more armaments; it needs to be a civil power. What is needed is disarmament, and it is needed right now."@en1
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