Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Each time a European Defence Agency project comes forward, the Government and those in supposed opposition who are also in favour say it is not the European army, which they claim they will oppose when it comes to it. They say that, right now, the project is so limited that we will, of course, be involved. It misses the point about mission creep in the development of the European Defence Agency and the interlinking of the Defence Forces with other member state armed forces. It misses what the EDA is all about in reality. The Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, stated that the purpose of the establishment of the EDA in 2004 was to support the member states and the Council in their efforts to improve European defence capabilities in various fields. More recently, we have had very explicit statements from European leaders. In 2017, Jean-Claude Juncker said we needed a fully-fledged European defence union by 2025. He said "We need it and NATO wants it". Before Christmas, Angela Merkel proposed in the European Parliament a European security council in which important decisions could be prepared more quickly. She said that while major steps had been taken in the field of military co-operation, there was a requirement to work on a vision to establish a real European army one day. The European Defence Agency is an integral part of that. It is the brainchild of the multi-billion euro European arms industry - the purveyors of death for massive profits. That is what it is about.

In the here and now, signing up to such a project is to commit to and participate in that European drive for militarisation. One of the ways in which it is so is that in pooling and sharing resources, even on projects which appear relatively benign, the Irish State and Defence Forces take on responsibilities which free up other armies and their resources for things that are evidently less benign and more overtly imperialistic in nature. I refer to the inter-relationship between the Defence Forces and EU forces. The idea is to make the Irish Defence Forces so interlinked with European armies that it becomes impossible to say "No" when the day comes for the fully-fledged European army Angela Merkel would like to see. We should have nothing to do with the project of European militarisation and nothing to do with the European Defence Agency. Instead, we should join with all those across Europe who oppose this further drive to open militarisation.

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