Lea Launokari, Women for Peace, Finland
Dear friends!
I come from Finland a country that was a neutral and non-aligned country before we entered European Union. I present Women for Peace which in Finland has been working very actively for over twenty years mainly with practical efforts for keeping the peace. Here I will also present a "Call for Referendums about the EU"
As you all know this very weekend the EU Summit is held in Nice. At this Summit the heads of state of the EU countries are trying to find a model for how to proceed towards an ever closer Union. The direction is quite clear. The EU is heading towards a federation. A federation with a common currency, common borders, a common police and a common foreign, security and defence policy. And lately several prominent political leaders, especially the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, have also been talking about a common government, an EU parliament with real power and an elected EU president.
The embryo of a common EU army is also there following the decisions from the Cologne and the Helsinki Summits of 1999. The final step in the militarisation of the European Union was taken in Helsinki at the Summit in December 1999. The conclusions from the Summit underline the determination of the EU to develop an autonomous capacity to take decisions and, where NATO as a whole is not engaged, to launch and conduct EU-led military operations in response to international crises. The summit decided that the EU, by the year 2003, should have 15 crisis management brigades consisting of 60.000 men ready to act in crises areas within 60 days and being prepared to stay in the area for at least 1 year. According to the Helsinki Summit documents, the brigades are "humanitarian", "peace keeping" or "peace shaping".
These new definitions of military operations sound very fine and noble. However even prominent person have admitted the problems with these kinds of new definitions. In December 1999, right before the EU Summit in Helsinki, Javier Solana, the European Union's "foreign policy supremo", emphasised the problematic situation of the non-aligned EU Member States in a situation when a peace keeping operation escalates and turns into warfare.
Recently (21.11.2000) The Swedish Supreme Commander Johan Hederstedt also stated that the border between crises and war is very breakable. For example "Today in Kosovo where the Swedish and Finnish battalion is a part of the British brigade. There is a possibility that if the Serb's are planning an offensive operation then the we have to defend ourselves. But if such a case happens it means that a crisis is a war." He also stated that Swedish non-alignment is not valid anymore since Sweden is active within the military crises management of the EU which is an alliance. Last week Tomas Ries a special researcher from the Military High School in Helsinki admitted in an interview that EU is developing towards more and more to a military "police"-alliance.
This means that the military reality does not hold good with the political rhetoric.
This radical change in the military status happened when the decision was taken earlier this autumn that the main part of the WEU (Western European Union) activities shall be transferred to the EU at the beginning of 2001. Even if the strategical Article V, the guarantee of mutual assistance in case of armed aggression, is still a WEU matter it is just a question of time when also this article will be transferred to EU. This is the famous " EU strategy of small steps", a satanic way to cheat the peoples of Europe about the real aims of the EU.
During the whole referendum debate in Finland in 1994 our political leaders emphasised that Finland is going to stay neutral and non-allied. Today nobody has openly admitted that this military status is gone. But according to several opinion polls the majority of the Finnish population is still against Finland's joining military alliances. So what is now going on in the EU security and defence field is against the will of the Finnish population.
The Heads of State in Helsinki left it open where the EU military forces shall be used. The Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen did not give any straight answer to the question after the Summit whether the forces will also be used for crises outside Europe. It was also left open whether the operations shall have UN consent and what the relations to NATO are going to be.
According to information received by the German daily newspaper "Die Welt" (22.11.2000) the new EU heavily armed super-army shall have the capacity to operate within a radius of 4000 kilometres from Brussels. This includes large parts of Africa, Near East and Caucasus. This is a clear threat to peace and to the disarmament process world wide.
What comes to NATO the picture is getting clearer day by day. At a press conference here in Brussels in May 2000 the secretary general of NATO, George Robertson proclaimed that his wish is that the structures of the common EU security and defence should rapidly be harmonised with the NATO structures. And the US Secretary of State, Madleine Albright stated 21.11.2000 that "this EU force will be available to both NATO and EU, in those cases where the Alliance as a whole is not militarily engaged. It offers a valuable complement to the efforts and capabilities of NATO".
In an article (26.11.00) in HBL (Hufvudstadsbladet) wrote Yrsa Grüne that now when 11 countries out of 15 EU member states are members of NATO and in this way also allianged with countries in Europe that are not EU members - Norway, Island, Hungary, Checz Republic, Poland and Turkey - is a very strict line between EU and NATO to be quite far-fetched.
Most of the EU inhabitants know very little about the military project of the European Union. Most of the EU inhabitants do not know that a new superstate, strongly dominated by the USA is built up in Europe.
My organisation, Women for Peace in Finland, is therefore supporting the "Call for Referendums about the EU" initiated by Alternative to EU in Finland, Les états géneraux de la souveraineté nationale in France, the National Platform in Ireland, Group Neutro in Slovenia and Centre No to EU in Sweden. This call will be handed over to the Swedish EU Presidency starting in January 2001. And it will of course also be sent to all governments in Europe and to other institutions involved.
My organisation is also supporting an "Appeal for Peace, Neutrality and Non-Alignment" initiated by Centre No to EU in Sweden, the Austrian Movement for Neutrality, the Czech Peace Society, the Hungarian Neutrality Foundation, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance in Ireland, the Norwegian Peace Council, Group Neutro in Slovenia and Group 484 in Yugoslavia. This appeal will also in some way be presented during the Swedish EU Presidency. The whole military issue is highly explosive in my neighbour country and it is our responsibility to raise this subject which the Swedish government will do anything to avoid.
Here we ask for your support and your participation in coming events in Sweden of which you will be informed as soon as the timetable is fixed.