Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-12-11-Speech-3-028-000"
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"en.20131211.3.3-028-000"2
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"Mr President, next week’s European Council has long been trailered in Brussels as a ‘defence Council’ to take some great leap forward in common security and defence policy, and we have heard this morning already the usual sort of mantras at great length from the Council and the Commission, but as far as I can see the actual defence content next week, apart from a list of homework for the Commission, is going to be very modest. Whatever decisions there are, they were nodded through by education and sports ministers at their Council meeting on 25 November. My question to the Council and the Commission is: what important decision on defence is actually going to be taken by Heads of Government at the Council next week?
I believe in fact that on common security and defence policy the tide has now begun to turn – in capitals at least, although I think we still live in a sort of wonderland world in this Chamber. Among the European powers there is now no appetite for an ambitious EU military policy. The emphasis has shifted quite rightly to civil activities in terms of crisis prevention, humanitarian assistance and post-conflict reconstruction. Many of us have long campaigned for just such a shift so that the European Union might actually do something useful in terms of complementing, rather than trying to imitate, NATO’s military muscle. It has been a long haul to get to this position.
We have seen the European Union try to place its institutional footprint on an increasing range of defence-related activities, wastefully duplicating staff and structures already very well established at NATO. Few CSDP missions stand up to critical scrutiny. Most of them, as it happens, were civilian. As one top American general put it, ‘the EU installed the plumbing, but there isn’t any water’."@en1
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