Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-271"
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"en.20061115.19.3-271"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is a matter of good manners in this House that one starts with warm congratulations to the rapporteur, and, while I am happy to do so, I also have to say that I am deeply saddened not to be able, for the first time in two and a half years, to recommend that my group approve a report – unless, that is, our main amendments to it are accepted.
I want to justify that firstly by reference to the report’s content, and secondly on grounds of form. What is fundamental is that a great deal of the report – as one Member has pointed out – reads like the armaments industry’s shopping list, but such a thing cannot be sustained under the title of ‘European Security Strategy and ESDP’, which refers to far more complex concepts.
That being so, the report is not a comprehensive concept, but rather the very opposite of one. I take it that that was the reason why the rapporteur’s own group tabled 45 amendments, which is a considerable figure.
When one looks at the report in detail, it is clear that what it is attempting to do is to blur the boundaries laid down by treaty between internal and external security. Europol is covered by the ESDP. The intention is that the ESDP should be used for the purpose of combating terrorism, and for the protection of infrastructure, the energy supply, and of the external borders. Combining police, military and judicial functions in this way is a blatant violation of treaties currently in force, and it also gives rise to additional security problems; it is the very approach taken by President Bush, Dick Cheney and the now-departed Rumsfeld. Homeland security modelled on US security policy has already failed and there is no need for us to copy it.
Secondly, the report gives the impression that there is no such thing as the civil arm of the European Security and Defence Policy, even though most of the 17 ESDP missions are civilian in nature. Nor is sufficient reference made to civil conflict prevention, yet that is precisely what is needed right now.
Thirdly, instead of going into detail about the defence market, it would have been timely to speak plainly about Europe’s security and about disarmament – both conventional and nuclear – yet the subject occurs nowhere in the report.
Fourthly, I would like to look at the question of what military goods are to be purchased: aircraft carriers, satellite communication systems – all these things are asked for, with the justification given being that we are becoming a defence union. What sign is there here, I ask you, of a realistic assessment of what we now have to do? We have to work towards harmonisation; we have to compel the nation states, in the interests of all, to harmonise their strategies, structures and equipment, but the idea of us being a defence union is somewhere over the rainbow. It always used to be the Greens who were fundamentalists, and it is quite astonishing that you have now gone that way.
As I see it, the resolutions adopted at Cologne, Helsinki and Feira have been turned on their heads, and, if I were a schoolteacher, I would give you nought out of ten for missing the point. I regret to have to say it, but this amounts to an attempt at remilitarising European foreign policy. In committee, we had negotiated a consensus, and it was the rapporteur himself who broke it at the last minute. That is an unfair way of going about things, and something we cannot accept."@en1
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