Addressing the European Parliament

On Monday, 30th March, I found myself speaking at a workshop arranged by the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Security and Defence in Brussels. With my colleague, Luis Simón, I was giving a presentation to the Sub-Committee’s MEPs on ‘Geostrategy and the Future of European Security and Defence Policy’. We were focussing on the location and utility of the Member States’ overseas military installations—especially those of France and the United Kingdom—and how they might be used in the coming years to boost the geographical and functional expansion of European foreign, security and defence policy.

• The workshop was put on to allow us to present our report on European overseas military installations, which was commissioned by the European Parliament in November 2008, directly to the MEPs. Please click here to download and read the PDF version of our report.

Unfortunately, certain elements of the British media picked up on the event, and misrepresented the facts in the pursuit of their usual anti-European agenda. It is fair to say that their reporting, particularly from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, was very biased and it seemed as if their reporters had not even bothered to read, let alone comprehend, the information contained within our report. Both papers carried an inaccurate headline, stating that the European Union wanted to take over British and French overseas military installations. This is complete nonsense; the European Union wants to do nothing of the sort! Our Briefing Paper was written independently for the European Parliament, and was more of a discussion piece to provoke debate at the Sub-Committee’s final plenary session of the current parliament, than a set of concrete proposals to be put to the vote. And both newspapers carried lots of quotes only from anti-Europeans, thereby failing to provide contending viewpoints, many of which were expressed by other MEPs at the workshop.

Most amusingly, Geoffrey Van Orden MEP asked us during the workshop why we wanted to have European flags hoisted-up over British military bases overseas, seemingly ignorant to the fact that American flags are already raised over at least two of them. Indeed, as Glyn Ford MEP responded in the workshop, Britain seems to have little knowledge of what even goes on in its base at Diego Garcia, which is leased to the United States until at least 2017. It is even suspected of having been involved in the ‘extraordinary renditions’ scandal. We can only wonder why Mr. Van Orden would prefer a foreign power to have control over British territory, but not the European Union, of which Britain is a part—and a very influential part, particularly where security and defence policy are concerned. And much like an airy cherub who pops up at every meeting and whispers ‘NATO, NATO, NATO’ to anyone bored enough to listen, he also failed to understand the central premise of our argument; that is, that as the geopolitical balance of power changes in Eurasia, the United States will no longer be in a position to underpin NATO, meaning that Europeans will have to take care of themselves. Indeed, it is only by strengthening the European Union that the Atlantic Alliance will continue to have relevance for the Americans, who will not want to be holding Europeans’ hands when they have bigger fish to fry elsewhere—like East Asia.

Liam Fox, the Tory shadow defence secretary, also somehow got in on the act and was mentioned in both the reports by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, even though we did not see him at the workshop. His absense probably explains his misunderstanding over who was responsible for commissioning our report in the first place. According to Liam: ‘This talk of grand strategy betrays the real intentions of the European Commission.’ The European Commission?! Had he bothered to check his facts, the poor Dr. Fox might have realised that the European Commission had absolutely nothing whatsover to do with our report, which—as we pointed out previously—was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Security and Defence.

Liam Fox was also quoted in both newspapers as having said: ‘The idea that we might turn our military bases over to the EU, for projects the British people have never given their assent to, is a twisted fantasy.’ This is good as far as it goes, but we can only wonder why, as with Mr. Van Orden, the shadow defence secretary has not raised similar objections as to the existence of United States military facilities on British soil, some of which still remain on the British home islands. Given that the British people have never provided their assent to the stationing of American forces in the United Kingdom, will he, as future defence secretary, order all American forces out of British territory too?

The thoroughly anti-European EU Referendum blog also had to have its own little say, by dismissing our presentation as ‘something and nothing’. And in one of the comment posts, it even dared to produce an extremely useful nugget of information: that Luis Simón—my co-author—was ‘a real person.’ Go figure!

On the other hand, the prestigious Jane’s International Defence Digest provided a much more accurate and thoughtful piece on the content of both our presentation and our report, with thoroughly precise reporting, good background context, and a wide range of viewpoints expressed with regards to our proposals. The reporter, Brooks Tigner, was even present on the day of the workshop itself. Unfortunately, however, the report is only available by subscription, although the introduction can be read by non-subscribers as well.

• You can also watch the entire workshop—please click here.