Ashton told to "stop flogging the dead horse of EU defence policy"
Posted, May 11, 2011 @ 00:00
Strasbourg, 11th May 2011 -- In the European Parliament in Strasbourg today MEPs debated the EU's defence ambitions with the EU High Representative, Baroness Ashton. She received criticism from euro-federalists for not doing enough and from euro-realists for having unrealistic and inappropriate ambitions.
In his speech, Conservative Defence Spokesman Geoffrey Van Orden challenged the whole thrust of EU defence policy:
He commented:
"The Common Security and Defence policy (CSDP) is an expensive vanity project which few really want. The EU just wants to notch up more phony 'military' missions to add lustre to its CSDP narrative. We see that time and again. The latest example is Libya.
"The High Representative has been desperate to add Libya to the list of EU "military" operations. The EU failed to get a mandate to enforce the maritime embargo on Libya - that, quite sensibly, is being carried out by NATO under its Operation Unified Protector. Then the EU begged the UN to invite it to carry out humanitarian assistance operation as a military operation. The UN rejected this.
"Neither NATO nor the UN want the EU pretending to get involved militarily."
"There is a useful job that the EU can do - delivering civilian humanitarian aid, helping in post-conflict reconstruction and development, building civil society - it should leave military operations to others"
"I do not understand why Baroness Ashton insists on flogging the very expensive dead horse that is EU defence policy".