Treaty of Lisbon (No. 5)

Meanwhile, back in this universe. Laughter.] It is easy in debates of this nature to get caught up in detail and to miss the big picture, so let us be clear what we are talking about today. This treaty proposes giving the EU a defence capability that will duplicate many of the functions of NATO. Worse, it will potentially compete with, rather than complement, NATO. Why does that matter? It matters because we believe that NATO, which has been the cornerstone of our defence for 60 years, should continue to have primacy. We believe that the transatlantic bonds with the United States and Canada should not be weakened. It is the Americans and Canadians who are fighting alongside British troops on the front line in Afghanistan while—with a few honourable exceptions, most notably the Dutch—it is not the majority of our EU partners. So let me set out what we believe to be the instruments of this treaty that could undermine the NATO alliance. Under the Lisbon treaty, there is further duplication of NATO's article V, with the solidarity clause, and no change to the duplication of NATO structures that already exists with the EU military staff, EU battle groups, the European rapid reaction force, the ATHENA mechanism and certain aspects of the European Defence Agency. There is no mention of NATO's right of first refusal for all military missions pertaining to European security. There is no mention of NATO's primacy. There is no change to the discriminatory attitude that the EU takes against non-European Union NATO member states, such as Norway and Turkey. That is especially true regarding the financing of EU military operations and Turkey's ““administrative agreement”” with the EDA, which has been continually blocked by Cyprus. We also have concerns regarding the democratic legitimacy of the ESDP under the Lisbon treaty. The newly created high representative will serve as a vice-president in the Commission and have a right of initiative for proposing military operations. That will bring supranationalism into EU defence planning for the first time. Consequently, foreign and defence policy in the EU will no longer be strictly intergovernmental. An unelected EU president will have a direct role in shaping the military budget for EU military operations by chairing the ATHENA special committee and will have a direct role in approving the new high representative. The treaty formally creates the European Defence Agency, which will be headed by the high representative, who is also a vice-president of the Commission. That is just the foothold in defence procurement that the Commission has so long desired, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) correctly pointed out. Even though the EDA exists today as a part of the ESDP, it has never been part of an EU treaty that has been ratified by all member states. Originally in the constitutional treaty, European integrationists decided to go ahead with the creation of the EDA, even though it failed to be ratified in France and the Netherlands. That was an act of contempt for the citizens of Europe. Consequently, the inclusion of the EDA in the Lisbon treaty is an attempt by the EU retrospectively to justify the existence of an organisation that was created despite being originally part of the failed constitutional treaty. The EDA sets out to develop defence capabilities and to promote armament co-operation between EU members, but what we need is greater armament co-operation with the military forces that we will be fighting alongside on the ground. We need better interoperability with the United States. We need more joint procurement projects with the United States, such as the joint strike fighter. There is no point participating in joint procurement projects with countries whose defence spending levels are too low to purchase the end products and, in any case, it should be done between sovereign nation states and not on an EU, supranational basis.