Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-09-Speech-3-240"
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"en.20030409.5.3-240"2
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"Mr President, the Morillon report treats European defence as part of a realistic, responsible strategy of solidarity and complementarity with the United States, and it therefore represents a substantial undertaking, involving planning, economic sacrifices and military investment. It is a necessary, urgent step forwards based on not underestimating the new terrorist and political threats. It is a coherent agenda
which I had occasion to propose last year with the study ‘
’ [A European sword].
The report avoids dangerous illusions which would not make the world safer and more democratic and certainly not make Europe more united. One of these illusions is the rekindling of unilateral pacifism, a return to the unilateral pacifism of the past of ‘Better red than dead’. Another is the illusion of a Europe which is independent, powerful and authoritative because it has broken with the United States, an illusion which resurrects the short-circuiting tactics of Gaullism, both hostile towards the United States and insensitive to European supranationality, particularly in matters of foreign and defence policy. This is an illusion which is deeply rooted in European nationalism and in ideologies which are now obsolete, an illusion which explains the strange alliance formed between right and left in the face of the war in Iraq and which, by contrast, exalts the principle of democratic intervention. This political illusion is more dangerous than imperial unilateralism or blind pacifism: while ostensibly guiding Europe it has divided it; it has divided the Fifteen, it has offended the countries of Eastern Europe at the very time of the reunification process, it has widened the gap between the Union and the United States and, before the right of veto could be exercised, it has helped to paralyse the Security Council, justifying military intervention outside the context of the UN.
Before abandoning itself to developing the institutional system, the Union must define its political vision more clearly, it must ensure the security of its people, territory and borders – which it has failed to do in the Balkans – it must take note of the erosion of arms control and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of bloody dictatorships, and it must strive resolutely to combat terrorism and to bring about security for Israel and a democratic Palestinian state.
If the Union wants to be allied with the United States rather than subordinate or hostile to it, neither resigned nor resentful, it must develop common defence and gradually assume leadership of the Atlantic Alliance, to which the United States is now only contributing 8% of its forces. To this end, it can take as a basis the Saint-Malo agreement between France and the United Kingdom and General Morillon’s report, which are the greatest achievements of European security policy and its development, which must be consolidated, built upon and extended to include the entire Union."@en1
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