Mr President, a quarter of a century ago, at the time of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the spirit in Helsinki was one of peace and cooperation. Now it is a spirit of European militarisation. At the Helsinki Summit, the EU expanded its role to include the militarisation of the Union. We are to establish our own European army for the EU, although it will not be called that officially. The Member States committed themselves to releasing troops from their own authority to form a fifty thousand strong European army and assigned troops equivalent to a whole corps for the joint deployment of the EU. In addition, they are going to create rapid deployment forces for wars lasting no more than a year. At Amsterdam a common foreign and security policy was referred to. At Cologne it was already a common security and defence policy that was mentioned. Since then, many, following the lead of the Commission, have started talking about a common defence. The ideas expressed speak for themselves. The EU has started to become a war alliance and a military alliance. At Helsinki, the attendance of defence ministers at meetings of the General Affairs Council was officially approved. The EU will thus acquire a Council of Ministers of War. In Helsinki a standing committee on political and security matters was set up. Since Helsinki, the commanders of the defence forces of the various countries have formed an EU Military Committee, which is free of any kind of democratic scrutiny. It was also decided at Helsinki to establish a Military Staff, which will be an EU military planning body for spying operations and mobilisation. Consequently, talk has begun of the need to increase military appropriations. Via the new institutions, a new defence dimension is being created, despite the fact that no agreement has been made in the Treaties that joint military operations fall within the scope of the EU. These decisions should be taken to the EU Court of Justice. Can Heads of State and Government extend the role of the EU without the approval of Parliament? The NATO countries doubtless intend to put the decisions of the fiftieth anniversary conference of the “Alliance” into effect. Since the decisions taken at Washington the NATO countries have been able to act outside the territories of their Member States. They have assumed the right to attack other countries without a mandate from either the UN or the OSCE. In NATO this is called humanitarian intervention, as it has no mandate under international law. In the EU, it is called crisis management, which also includes forcible peace-making. There was no decision at Helsinki to mandate crisis management or forcible peace-making. As the EU is being militarised, it would seem to be happening with a mandate from NATO. The Finnish Presidency has ended wretchedly from the point of view of preserving the non-alignment of a non-aligned State. If the meeting were historic this was mainly in the sense that the EU is being militarised. There were no surprises at Helsinki as far as EU enlargement and the Intergovernmental Conference were concerned. In the opinion of our group, the Russian attack on civilians in Chechnya is to be strongly condemned, and it was at Helsinki. In the fight against unemployment, we wish Portugal better success that Finland had.

Political group: GUE-NGL