Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-09-Speech-3-487"
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"en.20080709.40.3-487"2
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"Mr President, I would like to take up what Mr Verheugen said and also answer Mr Pflüger and Mr Batten on the question of what the citizens of the European Union want.
Eurobarometer surveys show that 70% to 80% of EU citizens believe we need a common security and defence policy. That became particularly clear with the terrible events in the Balkans. The 27 European countries spend EUR 170 billion a year on defence, yet these countries were unable to put an end to the bloodshed in the Balkans because we simply do not yet have a common European organisation for such operations. There were German, French, British, Italian, Luxembourgish and other forces, yet at the time it was only the Americans, not the Europeans, who had the capability to put an end to the bloodshed. Mr Morillon saw that with his own eyes and experienced it very much in person.
It is also quite wrong to refer to weapons in space here. What threat is there? If, for instance, we station Galileo or observation satellites in space to find out what is happening, it is done for the security of our citizens. The real danger is that weapons are stationed in space and used to destroy our communications satellites, because then our entire social system could be disrupted by relatively minor means. Just imagine what would happen if the telecommunications satellites for TV, for radio, for everything that makes up our society today, were destroyed.
That is why I believe we are on the right track, including with Galileo. We will probably find at the vote tomorrow that there has been a change of mind in the European Parliament. The first step was that we managed to get Galileo financed out of the European budget. The Committee on Budgets and the Committee on Foreign Affairs urged this very strongly and managed to obtain it. The second step is that Galileo is of course a civilian project, somewhat different in type from the American system, but that it is also necessary and that it is available for operations by EU forces in, for instance, Congo, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Chad.
I believe, therefore, that tomorrow will see a change in the majority view in the European Parliament."@en1
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