Ms Ellie Kinney:

Linking back to the social cohesion point from before, all of my work is largely focused on military decarbonisation and military emissions reporting. One of the best forms of military decarbonisation is peacebuilding and work towards social cohesion. It ties together wonderfully. That is one of the best ways for us to progress as a society in this topic.

Going back to whether there are environmental or related caveats within the spending, there is a culture of military exceptionalism across the EU. Therefore, it does not surprise me that I have basically not seen any kinds of restrictions or caveats or sections within this that are meant to curtail in any way the damage this spending will cause. I am not surprised by this because we see in every other relatively helpful and progressive EU policy the caveat that militaries are exempt from this. For example, a couple of weeks ago, there was a proposal on F-gases, which are highly polluting. The caveat within that, of course, was that militaries need not worry about the proposal. This happens across the board. We are very used to it at this point. As a result, there is no such proposal alongside what is happening. We know there are going to be excessive increases in military procurement. While we have this moment of great investment, let us use it to create a framework whereby we report on the emissions of the various militaries and their use and supply chains. That is not happening, though. There is no standardised approach to reporting military emissions in the EU. There has been EU policy around this topic and there has been progress. There was an EU militaries and climate change roadmap, which spoke to the need to have a standardised approach to reporting of military emissions. Ahead of COP28, the European Parliament voted in the resolution that it does annually as regards COP. It included language around the need for the EU to really push within the UNFCCC for a standardised approach to emissions reporting. We have seen absolutely no follow-up on any of this. What we have is a black hole of data. There were estimates recently that there was an 82% gap between what EU militaries reported to the UNFCCC they were emitting and how much climate damage they were actually doing. It is 82%; that is a huge amount.

We have this moment that could be useful. We are going to invest in this and while we are doing so, let us create the capacity to report on the emissions, but that has absolutely not been the case.

Similarly, this could be a moment when we talk about military decarbonisation. Realistically, this will take the form of peacebuilding, which is the best form of military decarbonisation. In the real world we live in, however, there will still need to be militaries, so there is a need for lower carbon technologies. There could be great investment in lower carbon technologies in the procurement push right now, but that is not happening. Instead, what we are seeing are countries proposing things like F-35 fighter jets and what those entail. They might be in use for the next 20 or 30 years. That is a carbon lock-in for the next 20 or 30 years, which will continue to hinder our attempts to reach net zero.

It is unsurprising to me that there is this military exceptionalism because it happens across the board.