23/3/05

The report lacks the requirements for a Europe of peace, focusing on how best to prepare for military intervention. For example it:

* emphasises the EU - NATO cooperation especially regarding armaments and the Berlin - Plus Framework;

* does not mention dangers to the status of neutral EU states arising from a close EU - NATO cooperation;

* urges the EU to bind its actions only to principles of the UN Charter,

* encourages military preventive and pre-emptive actions and generally the use of military force to tackle problems even outside the EU's external boarders;

* recognises the congruity in EU-US global threat assessments, emphasising the need for common understanding in resolving issues of concern such as security and use of military force;

* plays down the dangers of ESS, remaining silent about the implicit commitment to and real cost of arming the military intervention forces, while urging European tax payers to cover this;

* does not at least separate civil and military action instead pushes for greater and faster steps to be taken;

* points to the draft EU Constitution to demonstrate that militarization of the EU will be required by law.

Tobias Pflüger, Jaromír Kohlíček, Erik Meijer, Miguel Portas and Athanasios Pafilis