Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-13-Speech-2-395-000"
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"en.20111213.29.2-395-000"2
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"Mr President, at the risk of shocking the more federalist among you, I believe that defence policy is an eminently national policy. It responds to the specific strategic, diplomatic and security needs of each nation. Sharing capabilities is nothing more than a drastic loss of sovereignty, the single market of military equipment a joke, when certain Member States stock up on mainly US equipment, believing their defence is guaranteed by Washington, while Europe is incapable of imposing Community preference in this area as in so many others.
Regarding the EU Member States’ common security challenges, there is nothing that cannot be resolved through intergovernmental cooperation, without any intervention from Brussels. I am sorry, but entrusting these areas to Baroness Ashton would mean recognising that Moody’s and Standard & Poors are legitimate in judging our economic policies; it would mean accepting that ‘Merkozy’ can impose a German Europe on 27 peoples, which is absolutely delusional.
For 30 years and more since the disappearance of the Soviet threat, defence budgets have been the first to be sacrificed on the altar of budgetary restraint, to the point where most of our military tools have become deficient or dilapidated, all in the name of purely financial considerations, with each country waiting for its neighbour or supposed US big brother to make the efforts it is no longer prepared to make itself. However, you are making a mistake. Only by returning to independent and resolute national policies will we be able to individually equip ourselves with the necessary resources, not only to ensure our national interest and security, but also to cooperate in the use of those resources so as to overcome common challenges.
Creating more weaknesses and shortcomings has never been a wise idea."@en1
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