Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-05-Speech-3-211"
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"en.20010905.5.3-211"2
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"The main effect of Mr Schmid’s voluminous report is almost to make us forget the original question.
The answer this gives us by default – a Europe shrouded in fog and in words left unsaid, a coward that submits to the law of the strongest – is, in many respects, quite dismaying.
In fact, neither the rapporteur’s talent nor the courtesy of the chairman of this committee can make us forget that the strategy followed throughout was to drown the fundamental questions in a general debate which, ranging from moral judgments about the activities of the secret services to doubtful statements about technological matters, attempted to cover everything and everybody except Echelon and those who help to run it.
Yet at a time when the process of European integration is so clearly running out of steam, such fundamental questions would have deserved better than this deafening silence. And we will certainly have to pose them again.
Firstly, to the extent that it has been shown that EU Member States participate in Echelon, does this whole business not amount to anything more than a blatant violation of the EU Treaty? And if so, what sanctions are being envisaged?
The rapporteur answered yes to the first question. But what consequences did he draw from this? None, because he did not even address the tough but logical issue of sanctions, not even to explain why he refused to contemplate them. So people are sleeping easy in London and Berlin, because this Parliament, normally so prompt to be roused to indignation by the slightest attack on the constitutional state in any of the four corners of the world, has not even remonstrated about a blatant violation of the principles of the Treaty!
Secondly, since it has become clear during our activities that the European Union cannot embark on any large-scale defence and security operation without technical and logistical support from NATO, is there any point in laying the foundations for a European system equivalent to Echelon without first giving a political clarification of the relations between the European states that are members of Echelon and the Union, and in particular between the Union and NATO?
For the real source of the rapporteur’s embarrassment is indeed the fact that so long as the EU so obviously remains technically and financially shackled to NATO, the supposed European solidarity will give way to Atlantic solidarity, the sequel to the cold war, which is incompatible with the existence of an independent, European common defence and security policy.
The plain fact is that the majority of this Parliament – the same Parliament that adopted preventive ‘apartheid’ measures against the new, democratically elected Austrian government, that seriously considered placing Silvio Berlusconi’s government under surveillance – is refusing to take measures against Member States that have now been proven to be supporting an activity that contravenes the provisions of the Treaty, that does serious damage to European firms and represents a permanent threat to individual freedoms. The least one could say is that there are indisputably two weights and two measures and that to be fair we can only describe this business as a real scandal.
Yet for once, looking at the real problems raised by Echelon, we could have held a genuine debate on the basic principles and objectives of European integration: we could have seen the European nations for what they are, with their own history and their own loyalties. We could have asked ourselves what type of Europe we wanted to build."@en1
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