Mr. Emmanuel Jacob:

I thank the Deputy for the questions. It is hard to give a one-line answer on the situation all over Europe. It would be something new that we have one line across Europe and everybody is treated the same way. There are some countries where military personnel have political rights, and what I mean by political rights is the freedom to stand for election, not just participate in the election, because even that was a discussion in some countries before. However, even with these places, there are some differences between them. We have examples where from the moment a person stands for election and is a candidate, they have to leave the armed forces or go on a kind of military leave while waiting for the result. In other places, while a person is standing for election, they remain in the armed forces and then, at a certain moment, they are elected or not elected. In cases where the person is not elected, nothing has changed and they remain in the armed forces. In cases where the person is elected, there are two possibilities: either the person leaves the armed forces at that moment or they go on political leave. For example, there are Swedish Members of Parliament who have been 20 years on political leave. If something happens, they could go back one day, although, of course, they will not go back, but they still have military status.

One thing is very clear - and it is also one of the points mentioned in the OECD handbook on human rights in the context of armed forces, where political leave and standing for elections is the subject of one of the chapters - it is not about the armed forces; it is about the individual. There is no discussion about the fact that armed forces, as such, should be neutral and not political, but when it comes to the individual, that is something else. Where we all agree is on the point that somebody who is politically engaged and is in the military should never be able to do that in uniform. They do that as a citizen.

This is one of the famous points with regard to the concept of the citizen in uniform. For information, I would add that the this concept is something I have referred to quite often in the context of Germany. To be clear, I am not German; I am Belgian. However, we can draw lessons from what happened in the past. The principle of the citizen in uniform is something that has been established and implemented together with building up the new German armed forces. The meaning of the whole thing, in a short phrase, is making sure that soldiers are part of society and never again beside society or something separate. I think that is quite important.

I would make one further remark in conclusion. I certainly do not want to get into the Irish discussion as that is for my colleagues from PDFORRA and RACO. Nevertheless, the whole discussion is about one principle, which is making sure that what we have on the table is not weakening these rights. Every time we go for new legislation or new rules, we have to make sure that we make them better and stronger. Perhaps there are sometimes small things that have to be rectified but to weaken rights is the worst thing that can happen and, as I said in my opening statement, will surely not help the armed forces be a democratic part of society.