Explanation of vote - 12/01/2005 - Tobias Pflüger

"The greatest advances brought by the Constitution are to be found in the specific area of common security policy," thus it says in the report: Richard Corbett/Íñigo Méndez de Vigo (A6- 0070/2004) - "Constitution for Europe", which approves the Constitutional Treaty and which, moreover, recommends that "Parliament's overall opinion on the outcome of the IGC which concluded in June 2004 must be firmly in favour". For me this is also the most important reason for rejecting the EU Constitutional Treaty.

The militarization of the European Union is codified:

1. "Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities"(I-41, 3). This means no less than a commitment to armament for the member states of the EU. The arms race becomes constitutional obligation.

2. As far as foreign and military policy is concerned, it is the obvious goal of the Constitutional Treaty to make the European Union fit for global military intervention. The Treaty should secure the "operational capacity drawing on civil and military assets" (I-41, 1).

3. And: An Armament Agency "shall have at its task" the realisation of this policy and push through "useful measures for the strengthening of the industrial and technological basis of the defence sector" (III-311).

4. The EU Parliament (I-41, 8) and the European Court of Justice (III-376) are explicitly excluded from control over foreign and military policy. The options of EU-military-intervention are being massively extended.

5. In article III-309, the military options of the EU are being described. The so-called Petersberg tasks ("humanitarian interventions" up to and including battle-type interventions) will be massively extended and among other things supplemented by so-called "disarmament operations".

6. Of special explosiveness is the "permanent structured (military) cooperation" (Protocol. 23), which will be more precisely defined now by an additional protocol. Here, the institutionalisation of a military core Europe is taking shape.

7. All attempts to have a European Constitution be based on the civilian co-responsibility of the EU for the maintenance of peace in the world have failed.

8. Instead of acting, by way of constitutional obligation, in favour of strengthening the role of the United Nations in inter-state conflicts and of subjecting themselves in their action to the Charta of the United Nations and especially to the prohibition against violence in international relations, there finds itself a commitment solely to the "principles of the United Nations Charter", which leaves open the possibility for not UN-mandated military interventions by the EU. (I-3, 4)

9. Also missing are explicit formulations that from the territories of the EU, there may never again depart any war. The outlawing of wars of aggression, one also looks for - in vain. Also an explicit prohibiting of world-wide military politics of intervention is not demanded.

10. Sensible institutions which might help at the level of the EU to create a peaceful Europe are also a wrong indication: Neither a European agency for disarmament and conversion, nor agencies for arms exports interdiction control were established.

11. A journey to the stars away is this Constitutional Treaty from a European Union, which would reject war and military application of force for the solution of conflicts, which would want to get rid of weapons of mass destruction and would convert its arms industry to civilian production and end weapons' exports.

12. A peace-promoting reduction of military capacities to a structural incapacity to attack of the EU, however, is turned into its opposite in the Constitutional Treaty. Everything is subordinated to the creation of the structural and concrete capacity to attack. Only in this way, according to the self-understanding of the EU leaders, the global power projection is apparently possible.

Therefore, I say NO to this EU Constitutional Treaty and Support the Campaign against the EU Constitutional Treaty.