Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

President Macron has made it clear that he supports, as do a number of other EU leaders, the move towards the creation of an EU army or military intervention force and a shared defence budget. The PESCO agreement, which they want to sign off on in December, is a step towards that. What President Macron and other European leaders think is clear. How does the suggestion that we may sign up to aspects of this agreement square with our tradition and position of military neutrality? The Taoiseach has made distinctions between a common foreign and security policy and involvement in a European military force or contributing to a defence budget. However, signing up to an agreement of this nature, a common foreign and security policy and pledges to progressively increase military expenditure hardly seem to be in line with protecting our neutrality, particularly when the architects and supporters of what is proposed are saying explicitly that it is a step towards the creation of a European army and a European common defence. Is talking about signing up to this not backdoor abandonment of our tradition of military neutrality?

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