Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rapporteur: Ari Vatanen

Minority Opinion tabled by GUE/NGL, Brussels, 21.January 2009

We especially condemn that the report - beside being uncritically in favour of a close cooperation between the European Union and an ever more aggressively behaving NATO - is:

• advocating for increased NATO-EU cooperation by improving the Berlin plus arrangements which allow the EU to have recourse to NATO assets and capabilities, in order to allow the two organisations to intervene in crises with military means;
• advocating permanent structures of cooperation between the EU and NATO;
• calling for the EU's existing military capacities to be further developed and urging EU Member States for more investment in defence;

• welcoming to grant Georgia and Ukraine the NATO Membership Action Plan (as in the draft was written);
• supporting the establishment of a permanent EU Operational Headquarters;
• advocating the deliberate mixing and blurring civil and military capacities;
• stating that the strategic nuclear forces are and should remain the ultimate guarantor of military security;
• endorsing so called humanitarian interventions;

we demand:

• a civilian EU;
• the strict separation of NATO and the EU;
• the abolishment of nuclear weapons;
• military expenditure to be used instead for civilian purposes.
• abolish NATO!


Signed by:

Tobias Pflüger
Willy Meyer Pleite
Erik Meijer
Věra Flasarovà
Kyriacos Triantaphylides
Adamos Adamou
Athanasios Pafilis