Article in: junge Welt - 05/26/05 - Tobias Pflüger

„European soldiers are our business cards in the world.“ In these words, the Luxembourgian defence minister, Luc Frieden, appreciated the fact that the EU defence ministers had agreed, at their meeting in the beginning of the week in Brussels on a behavioural code for military intervention. This code envisages that the soldiers should “respect ethnic religious and cultural differences” and that they should keep human rights. Sexual exploitation and the use of drugs should be prohibited.

That had become necessary after ever more military missions are supposed to be conducted by the EU. Thus there is taking place at this time in Bosnia the ALTHEA mission with over 7000 soldiers under the EU flag. It is planned, moreover, to take over the Kosovo mission from NATO. At the planning stage are also possible interventions in the Indonesian province of Aceh. According to their own self- understanding, all these battle missions are also designed to make the EU fit for upcoming interventions in combat.

Of course, a massive arms build-up has to take place to finance these missions. For this reason, the EU Council of Ministers passed a new catalogue of military procurement in order to be able to achieve a truly global combat capability as soon as possible. Every six months, it should be reviewed in the future, what the EU member states have already accomplished in this matter.

In the light of this armament scenario, it is quite surprising that any type of militarisation of the EU is being denied vehemently by the EU defence ministers. Luc Frieden once more emphasised explicitly at the ministerial meeting that Europe “should not become a Europe with a military dimension.” At the same time, he emphasised that Europe wishes a Europe, “in which the defence dimension plays an important role.”

Also as far as the question of combat groups is concerned, important decisions were taken at the ministerial meeting. Thus the results of the meeting of May 11th were emphasised one more time. Here it had been agreed that until 2007/2008 full battle-readiness should be reached. In this context, also the integration of Norway into the battle group concept is important. Starting in January 2007, it should be possible to conduct two operations at the same time. In any case, there should be set up in 2005 three combat groups, in 2006 and 2007 yet another three respectively and, in 2008, four additional battle groups. These 13 combat units should comprise 1.500 soldiers each and be ready for action within a fortnight.

In Brussels, the defence ministers agreed - without any basis in a Treaty - that also the EU armament agency will be charged with far-reaching tasks. The European taxpayers (men and women) are simple confronted with a fait accompli . Especially also in light of the rejection of the EU constitutional treaty by large shares of the population in France and in the Netherlands, this fact is plain cynicism. For the European armament firms, it was, as is well-known, apparently of major significance that the arms agency was anchored constitutionally in the EU treaty. Calls for a moratorium in the build-up of the arms agency, at least until the referendums in fall 2006, supposed to finally decide on the EU constitutional treaty, thus found no echo at all. Civil Europe has completely gotten out of sight of the EU Summit of Ministers. Instead it is only a matter of the better functioning of rearmament and the collaboration in the case of future interventions into foreign wars.

Translated by Carla Krüger