Issue 168 of People's News

national | eu | press release Thursday June 08, 2017 22:22 by people - People's Movement

News Digest of the People's Movement

PEOPLE’S NEWS -News Digest of the People’s Movement. No. 168 23 May 2017

Contents of this issue are:
“The EU is in a unique position to provide global security”
Feeding the Casino Economy
“An EU army is a project that would give additional weight to the EU foreign and security policy”
Wake up to TiSA!
Who is Paul Kehoe?
The European Patent Office—a bad employer
The militarist legacy of Enda Kenny
EU trade deals must be ratified by all members
More on Kenny, EU militarisation, and even Brexit
No honeymoon for Macron

Here's an extract from the The militarist legacy of Enda Kenny

Federica Mogherini, vice-president of the EU Commission and its high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, has said that the contribution of France under its new president, Emmanuel Macron, would be more important to the project’s military ambitions than Britain, which is not expected to contribute when it quits the club.

Mogherini made the remarks as she arrived at a summit meeting of defence ministers in Brussels, at which they are expected to rubber-stamp a plan for a new EU military head-quarters and an expansion of the bloc’s battle groups. This will be one of Enda Kenny’s legacies as minister for defence.

EU officials have an ambitious plan to pool military resources, and they want to change the way foreign interventions are paid for in future, to encourage member-states to put “boots on the ground” on behalf of Brussels. Mogherini has repeatedly insisted that the proposal is not for the creation of an EU army, but critics say that the EU is slowly syphoning away powers from member-states through a form of “legislative capture.”

Mogherini said: “At the moment I don’t see the consequence of Brexit on our work. We are still twenty-eight, we will continue to work at twenty-eight by consensus and it’s working well up until now.” She expected to see France provide a “push” to the process under its new Europhile president, and that it would play a “more important” role, along with Germany, Italy, Spain, and Estonia.

“I honestly see a determination on the part of the other twenty-seven member-states to make a European defence one of the key dossiers for the future of the EU.”

These twenty-seven include Ireland, whose people generally haven’t a clue about what’s going on and what’s being agreed to in their name.

The EU’s military plans include the ability to act “autonomously,” independently of NATO, while the president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said the club needs its own army in order to be a true global power.