Interview in: junge Welt, 11/3/05

The ascent to the European constitution would not be communicable. The PDS regional chairmen in the West demand a clear "no".

A conversation with Tobias Pflüger (Tobias Pflüger was elected into the European Parliament in Summer 2004 as non-party member on the list of the PDS. There, together with his colleagues, he belongs to the fraction of GUE/NGL)

jW: Apparently, some in the PDS are playing with the idea the two regions, in whose governments it sits, might approve the EU constitution in the Bundesrat (Chamber of Regions). One could call that election fraud, could not one?

T.P.: I act on the assumption that the PDS representatives will say "No" in the regional governments, that these laender will then abstain in the vote in the Federal Chamber and that there won't be any agreements behind our backs, according to the motto: "The PDS says "No", but at the same time gives the SPD by a twinkle of the eyes green light for a "Yes". It is a matter of the credibility of the PDS. This is also stressed by a letter by the West German regional chairmen, which urges a "No" by the PDS in Berlin and in Mecklenburg Vorpommern. I hope very much that the PDS will not let it come to an agreement. If I am wrong, then the PDS has a problem, in particular in its relationship with the peace movement.

jW: It is still unclear, when the Chamber of Regions will vote, but the ratification procedure is already on the way. On February 24, there took place the first reading in the Bundestag (the Federal Parliament) - top secret so to say.

T.P.: Obviously, it is the strategy by the SPD/Green government to get the EU Constitutional Treaty through secretly, silently and quietly. Moreover, it was noteworthy in the Bundestag debate that hardly anyone talked about the content of the constitutional treaty. Instead , one prefers to lead ideological debates such as: "Europe is great, and how marvellous that there is Constitution now."

jW: The Financial Times Germany recently wrote that the chancellor has, for the case of the failure of the Treaty, a plan B in his drawer. According to that one, the stakes should then be put on the concept of a core Europe and the German and French military be fused.

T.P.: In the European constitutional treaty, the concept of a core Europe is institutionalised by way of the permanent structured (military) cooperation. In this respect, it makes imminent "sense" that the German government is thinking about how it can reach this goal, if need be, even without the Constitutional Treaty.

jW: If it was successful, an old dream of the elites of this country would materialise: Germany would have access to the atom bomb.

T.P.: There exists a "European Defence Paper", developed on behalf of the EU, in which there is written among other things that one does not exclude the employment of nuclear weapons. Lothar Rühl, former state secretary in the defence ministry and co-author of the paper, recently stressed in the FAZ how happy he was that the nuclear option was being kept explicitly open. A scandal, which receives much too little public attention, which shows, in what direction this EU military policy is going under German-French-British direction. A similar scandal is also that among the options proposed, there is also the one of preventive war.

jW: And this is also supposed to be passed shortly?

T.P.: At this time, the European parliament is discussing a preliminary draft. In principle, the situation is such that the deputies are only heard in matters of the common defence and security policy. This also holds for the European Security Strategy (ESS), which the European Council has already passed and on which the European Parliament will deliberate shortly on the basis of the so-called Kuhne Report. The referee Helmut Kuhne is deputy of the SPD. Also all the others responsible from the other fractions are Germans. Without any exception! A clear sign of the German dominance in this area. This report piquantly stresses the parallelism of the threat analyses between the ESS and the US American National Security Strategy. Moreover, it wants to materially secure the statement, contained in the ESS, that the first line of defence will in the future often run abroad and in many points even goes beyond the ESS. Of course, we can only refuse that. Our fraction has therefore unanimously supported my proposal of rejection and the elaboration of a minority vote against this report.

Interview: Wolfgang Pomrehn

Translation: Carla Krüger, 11/3/05