French solution to security threat: slash defence and bring on the EU
Posted, June 18, 2008 @ 14:00
- 18th June 2008: The plans unveiled yesterday to cut the French Armed Forces by 54,000 just as France demands a greater EU role in defence reveals their cynical aim to create a European military force to pursue French foreign policy objectives with other people's money.
Conservative Spokesman on Defence, Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, commented:
"These proposals were finalised in May and could have been made public then. Instead they were cynically withheld until after the Irish Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
"At a time when more military manpower is clearly needed in so many areas where the interests of the democracies are at stake, military cuts are deeply irresponsible.
"The French Armed Forces are in dire need of investment. Only two weeks ago, leaked documents showed that half of France's Leclerc tanks, half its Puma helicopter fleet and nearly two thirds of its Mirage F1 reconnaissance jets, are in too poor a state for deployment.
Mr Van Orden added: “Instead of investing more in defence the French continue to pursue their ambition for an EU defence capability - to create a European military force to pursue French foreign policy objectives with other people's money.
“Lip service is paid to NATO in order to keep onside a US presidency in a period of change and a weak British government which always gives in to French demands that never benefit the UK.
"We see the reality in operational theatres such as Afghanistan, where the much trumpeted French promise of 700 “extra troops” turned out to be nothing more than a transfer of units already in Kabul to a relatively quiet area of the Eastern provinces.
“The British Government needs to take a much more robust approach to President Sarkozy and make it clear that France must stop playing institutional games and genuinely share the defence burden instead of trying to shift it."