Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #700 Deutschland Uber Alles

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: With the end of the Cold War, much of Europe realigned in accor­dance with the geopo­lit­i­cal goals of the Third Reich–Germany reunit­ed, the Sovi­et Union, Czecho­slo­va­kia and Yugoslavia frag­ment­ed, the lat­ter two along the par­a­digm insti­tut­ed by Axis occu­pa­tion forces dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Ger­many is sup­port­ing dri­ves to split up exist­ing EU mem­bers, pro­mot­ing the “inde­pen­dence” of eth­nic groups with­in those coun­tries.

In addi­tion, oth­er EU members–France in particular–are adopt­ing Ger­man revi­sion­ist views of the Sec­ond World War.

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the obser­va­tion of the end of World War I, the broad­cast notes this fun­da­men­tal revi­sion of his­to­ry. The Paris obser­va­tion was high­light­ed by [French] pres­i­dent Sarkozy’s his­tor­i­cal revi­sion of the Ver­sailles Treaty. Long blamed for the rise of Nazism by Ger­man revi­sion­ists, the Ver­sailles Treaty is now cit­ed by Sarkozy as a cause of WWII and the rise of the Third Reich.

Sig­ni­fy­ing the tri­umph of revi­sion­ist his­to­ry of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is the obser­va­tion of Novem­ber 9th as a day of nation­al mourn­ing for the fall­en in Ger­many. That date is also the anniver­sary of Hitler’s Beer­hall Putsch in 1923 and Die Krys­tall­nacht in 1938.

Next, the pro­gram delin­eates Ger­man maneu­ver­ing to con­trol the Euro­pean Union. The Fed­er­al Repub­lic is pres­sur­ing the EU to grant the posts of Coun­cil Pres­i­dent and For­eign Min­is­ter to Ger­many.

Ulti­mate­ly, Ger­many seeks to dom­i­nate the EU’s Exter­nal Action Ser­vice, which will han­dle inter­face with the rest of the world, in effect becom­ing the “For­eign Office” of the union.

One of Ger­many’s major for­eign pol­i­cy goals vis a vis the EU is to dimin­ish or mar­gin­al­ize the British con­ser­v­a­tive influ­ence. Ger­many sees the Unit­ed King­dom’s Labor Par­ty as a friend­lier, less “EU skep­tic” enti­ty with which to work.

Among the for­eign pol­i­cy goals Ger­man inter­ests are pur­su­ing and that would be poor­ly received by the Tories is the cre­ation of a “Greater Ger­many” that would include Aus­tria!

Fur­ther devel­op­ing pan-Ger­man goals for the geo­graph­i­cal restruc­tur­ing of Europe, the broad­cast high­lights plans to effect the seces­sion of the North Tyrol from Italy, reunit­ing it with Aus­tria. The Free­dom Par­ty of Austria–founded as a vehi­cle for the polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Aus­tri­an Nazis who had served the Third Reich and head­ed (until his death) by Jorg Haider– has been a major agi­ta­tor on behalf of this goal.

In addi­tion, Ger­many and its Green and Euro­pean Free Alliance allies have been push­ing for the seces­sion of Cat­alo­nia from Spain.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of fas­cist con­nec­tions of the Green Par­ty; Ger­man plans for an all-EU army; dis­cus­sion of the Hab­s­burg dynasty and the prospec­tive reca­pit­u­la­tion of some of its eth­nic and geopo­lit­i­cal fea­tures; review of the UNPO; review of attempts to frag­ment the Unit­ed States; spec­u­la­tion about the role of the new­ly “inde­pen­dent” eth­nic groups as prospec­tive vot­ing allies of Ger­many with­in an expand­ed EU.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the obser­va­tion of the end of World War I, the broad­cast notes the fun­da­men­tal revi­sion of his­to­ry under­way in Europe. In addi­tion to down­play­ing the sub­stance of the con­flict, mak­ing vic­tors and van­quished co-equal, the Paris obser­va­tion was high­light­ed by [French] pres­i­dent Sarkozy’s his­tor­i­cal revi­sion of the Ver­sailles Treaty. Long blamed for the rise of Nazism by Ger­man revi­sion­ists, the Ver­sailles Treaty is now cit­ed by Sarkozy as a cause of WWII and the rise of the Third Reich.

The French com­pli­ance with Ger­man his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism is not sur­pris­ing, giv­en the fact that–as we saw in FTR #305, among oth­er programs–the eco­nom­ic occu­pa­tion of France by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work nev­er end­ed, afford­ing Ger­many de fac­to polit­i­cal con­trol of that nation.

Sig­ni­fy­ing the tri­umph of revi­sion­ist his­to­ry of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is the obser­va­tion of Novem­ber 9th as a day of nation­al mourn­ing for the fall­en in Ger­many. That date is also: the anniver­sary of Hitler’s Beer­hall Putsch in 1923 and Die Krys­tall­nacht in 1938. In the Nazi tract The Turn­er Diaries, the date Novem­ber 9th is cel­e­brat­ed as “Mar­tyr’s Day,” a day of com­mem­o­ra­tion of those who gave their lives in the ser­vice of Nazism.

At the end of this past week, the estab­lish­ment in Berlin was review­ing with great sat­is­fac­tion a week that brought sev­er­al vic­to­ries for its par­ti­san inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry. Accord­ing to observers, the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­mem­o­ra­tion cer­e­monies of the Armistice end­ing the First World War in Paris was “a price­less polit­i­cal act”. The trans­for­ma­tion of the mem­o­ry of the vic­to­ry over the Ger­man aggres­sors into a memo­r­i­al, lev­el­ing for the vic­tims “on both sides” of the war, was accom­pa­nied by the type of crit­i­cism of the Ver­sailles Treaty of 1919, that is usu­al­ly heard main­ly from Ger­man revi­sion­ists. Berlin’s cel­e­bra­tion of a “Fes­ti­val of the Ger­mans” on Nov. 9, the day of the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Nazi Pogrom Night in 1938, is an “affront to the Jew­ish vic­tims,” one that would not have been fath­omable just a few years ear­li­er, is a state­ment that was met with applause. “Mak­ing pol­i­cy with his­to­ry is stak­ing a claim on spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship” is the way the press summed up the fact that the Ger­man inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry is being imposed on the oth­er Euro­pean nations. This Sun­day, Berlin will close the cur­rent memo­r­i­al week with the annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Ger­man sol­diers killed in bat­tle (“Volk­strauertag” Nation­al Day of Mourn­ing). As usu­al, also Ger­man war crim­i­nals will be hon­ored at the cer­e­monies.

Equal­ly for Both Sides

Berlin con­sid­ers the his­tor­i­cal polit­i­cal mega events, draw­ing to a close at the end of the week, a con­sid­er­able suc­cess. Fol­low­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties in mem­o­ry of the open­ing of the Berlin Wall, it was above all the Chan­cel­lor’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cel­e­bra­tions in Paris for the anniver­sary of the Armistice of 1918 that the press con­sid­ers “a price­less polit­i­cal act”.[1] The cer­e­mo­ny that since 1920 had been ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of France’s vic­to­ry over the Ger­man aggres­sors, was trans­formed by French Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy into a memo­r­i­al for the war dead on both sides. “On this Novem­ber 11, we are not cel­e­brat­ing the vic­to­ry of one peo­ple over anoth­er, but rather remem­ber­ing a test of fate that had been equal­ly hor­ri­ble for both sides,” the pres­i­dent said.[2] Until now this ver­sion, plac­ing aggres­sors and defend­ers at the same lev­el, was prin­ci­pal­ly found in Ger­many. Sarkozy has reaped enor­mous protest in France. As men­tioned by the British press, a few war vet­er­ans voiced uneasi­ness at hear­ing the Ger­man anthem and see­ing Ger­man uni­forms at the Arc de Triomphe,[3] where they had not been heard and seen since the Ger­man inva­sions of France.

Admis­sion

Min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in Paris have announced that a rep­e­ti­tion of this cer­e­mo­ny will not be tol­er­at­ed. But Pres­i­dent Sarkozy was applaud­ed in Ger­many. The “ ‘mod­ern­iza­tion’ of the under­stand­ing of his­to­ry” is “essen­tial” for the rela­tions between Berlin and Paris, explains the dai­ly Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung. Con­cern­ing Sarkozy’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Armistice cel­e­bra­tions, the jour­nal, which is solid­ly anchored in the Ger­man estab­lish­ment, con­cludes with grat­i­tude that “admis­sions that ear­li­er tri­umphs were mis­takes, are par­tic­u­lar­ly high steps.”[4] As the French press rather osten­ta­tious­ly not­ed, the memo­r­i­al cer­e­monies include a clear crit­i­cism of the Ver­sailles Treaty of 1919. For exam­ple, the Ger­man chan­cel­lor did not lay flow­ers at the stat­ue of Prime Min­is­ter Georges Clemenceau, who in France is known as the “Father of the Vic­to­ry” over the Ger­man aggres­sors and had been deci­sive in the for­mu­la­tion of the Ver­sailles Peace Treaty. Sarkozy read­i­ly accept­ed these ges­tures. “In 1918,” he said, Paris “had not under­stood” how to bring about true peace, “not only because the vic­tors lacked gen­eros­i­ty, but also because they refused to acknowl­edge how they were bound to the trag­ic fate of the vanquished.”[5] The point of view that the Ver­sailles Peace Treaty was unjust and had con­tributed to a rad­i­cal­iza­tion of Ger­man pol­i­tics that led to hand­ing pow­er over to the Nazis, had been a point of view held main­ly by Ger­man revi­sion­ists, but is now tak­ing up more space in the Ger­man mass media.[6]

Shift of Accents

The Novem­ber 9, cel­e­bra­tions in Berlin had also been applaud­ed. Accord­ing to the dai­ly Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung, this year’s anniver­sary of the open­ing of the Berlin Wall has “con­quered a sta­tus” that, until now “had been avoid­ed.” The dai­ly writes: “in accord with con­ven­tions of the now expired 20th Cen­tu­ry, Novem­ber 9 could not, was not even per­mit­ted to become the cel­e­bra­tion of the Ger­mans.” “Even fifty years lat­er, no one would have dared to com­mit such an affront to the Jew­ish vic­tims of the Nazi Pogrom Night that took place on the same day on the cal­en­dar in 1938 — nei­ther in ref­er­ence to the pop­u­la­tion at home nor pub­lic opin­ion abroad.”[7] In fact, in the sec­ond half of the 90s, when neo-Nazis used the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Nazi Pogrom Night to stage a pub­lic com­mem­o­ra­tion of the open­ing of the Berlin Wall it was con­sid­ered a vio­la­tion of a taboo.[8] “Twen­ty years lat­er, the accents have shift­ed” con­tin­ued the Frank­furter All­ge­meine and con­clud­ed “mak­ing pol­i­cy with his­to­ry is stak­ing a claim on spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship, cou­pled with the will to take polit­i­cal action.” The jour­nal points out that the pres­ence of numer­ous offi­cials rep­re­sent­ing their coun­tries at the fes­tiv­i­ties, showed rev­er­ence to Berlin’s par­ti­san inter­pre­ta­tion of history.[9]

Hege­mo­ny

The “Volk­strauertag” (the Nation­al Day of Mourn­ing) ends the cur­rent memo­r­i­al week, which has brought Berlin sig­nif­i­cant inroads in impos­ing its par­ti­san inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry. Sun­day after­noon, the Ger­man state-run “First Tele­vi­sion Chan­nel,” will make a live broad­cast of the cen­tral memo­r­i­al ser­vice from the Ger­man Reich­stag, with the Ger­man pres­i­dent as keynote speak­er. Pres­i­dent Horst Koehler will com­mem­o­rate all those who died in the wars of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and of its legal pre­de­ces­sors, includ­ing war criminals.[10] Also among the war dead being hon­ored Sun­day are the many Ger­man sol­diers who lost their lives in 1914 when they invad­ed France. The fact that the Ger­man plans of occu­pa­tion could be ward­ed off, at the time, was no longer the focal point of fes­tiv­i­ties in Paris last week­end. On the oth­er hand, tomor­row, Sat­ur­day, a prepara­to­ry “Inter­na­tion­al Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice” will be held in Berlin, which will set the mood for Sun­day’s Nation­al Day of Mourn­ing, bring­ing togeth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from about 30 nations — under the lead­er­ship of the Ger­man War Graves Com­mis­sion, which will also pre­side at Sun­day’s memo­r­i­al ser­vices in the Reich­stag. Step by step Ger­many’s polit­i­cal pre­dom­i­nance in Europe is being also imposed through its hege­mo­ny over the inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry.

[1] Novem­bertage; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 12.11.2009
[2] Le dis­cours du prési­dent Sarkozy à l’Arc de Tri­om­phe; Le Monde 12.11.2009
[3] Merkel and Sarkozy improve diplo­mat­ic rela­tions on Armistice Day; The Times 12.11.2009
[4] Novem­bertage; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 12.11.2009
[5] La France et l’Alle­magne célèbrent le 11-Novem­bre, devenu un “jour de paix”; Le Monde 12.11.2009
[6] see also Unbear­ably Harsh and Unjust
[7] Novem­bertage; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 12.11.2009
[8] Erneuter Nazi­auf­marsch in Mar­burg; Antifaschis­tis­che Nachricht­en 24/1997
[9] Novem­bertage; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 12.11.2009. In spite of it all, the Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung sounds a note of cau­tion con­cern­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties around Novem­ber 9. The chan­cel­lor will “have to make clear that protests and demon­stra­tions can point to prob­lems and solu­tions — ‘we are one peo­ple’.” But the jour­nal hints that, in the future, the illu­sion should be avoid­ed that the pop­u­la­tion’s rep­e­ti­tion of protests could cre­ate seri­ous prob­lems for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In future com­mem­o­ra­tions of the open­ing of the Berlin Wall, it should be made clear that “respon­si­ble gov­ern­ments are the only ones that can reg­u­late the sug­gest­ed solu­tions or demands and apply them on a long-term basis.”
[10] see also Staat­sober­haupt ehrt deutsche Aggres­soren, Wehrpro­pa­gan­da, Gruften der Täter, Heldenge­denken, Das große Gle­ich­machen and Hin­ter­grund­bericht: Der Volks­bund Deutsche Kriegs­gräber­für­sorge

“His­to­ry in the Mak­ing”; german-foreign-policy.com; 11/13/2009.

2. Next, the pro­gram delin­eates Ger­man maneu­ver­ing to con­trol the Euro­pean Union. The Fed­er­al Repub­lic is pres­sur­ing the EU to grant the posts of Coun­cil Pres­i­dent and For­eign Min­is­ter to Ger­many.

Ulti­mate­ly, Ger­many seeks to dom­i­nate the EU’s Exter­nal Action Ser­vice, which will han­dle inter­face with the rest of the world, in effect becom­ing the “For­eign Office” of the union.

Ger­many’s plans for an all-Euro­pean army are mov­ing for­ward.

Just a few days before the future lead­ing posi­tions for the EU are to be des­ig­nat­ed, Berlin is rais­ing demands for access to lead­ing posts in the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS)and the EU Com­mis­sion. As explained by the Ger­man Min­is­ter of State to the For­eign Min­istry, Wern­er Hoy­er, the EU Coun­cil Pres­i­dent and the For­eign Min­is­ter do not have to be Ger­man, but Ger­many “lays great weight” on “rel­e­vant­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing” at the admin­is­tra­tive lev­el posi­tions just below them, which are con­sid­ered deci­sive­ly influ­en­tial on Brus­sels’ poli­cies. Berlin is giv­ing the new Exter­nal Action Ser­vice a par­tic­u­lar­ly high pri­or­i­ty, since it con­sol­i­dates the EU’s exter­nal pol­i­cy and is sup­posed to pro­vide Brus­sels with new glob­al pow­er impact. Ger­man pol­i­cy advi­sors con­sid­er that the EU has the “poten­tial of a world pow­er” but point out that this poten­tial must first be estab­lished through Brus­sels’ exter­nal pol­i­cy. It was under Ger­man pres­sure that the deci­sion was made to place the EU’s mil­i­tary plan­ning and oper­a­tion staff with­in the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Exter­nal Action Ser­vice, to be able to direct­ly incor­po­rate mil­i­tary oper­a­tions into EU exter­nal pol­i­cy. In the mean­time, the Ger­man project of cre­at­ing an EU army is win­ning favor. Last week­end the Ital­ian For­eign Min­is­ter gave his accord.

Just a few days before the EU Spe­cial Sum­mit on Thurs­day, wran­gling per­sists over who will be giv­en Brus­sels’ two key func­tions. Sev­er­al promi­nent politi­cians are cam­paign­ing for the posts of Coun­cil Pres­i­dent and For­eign Min­is­ter. It is said that a deci­sion will be made soon. The gov­ern­ment lead­ers of the Benelux coun­tries are said to have good chances. The pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Bun­destag, Nor­bert Lam­mert (CDU) has spo­ken out in favor of Lux­em­burg’s Prime Min­is­ter, Jean-Claude Junck­er. In the EU, Junck­er is not known for obstruct­ing Ger­man polit­i­cal projects. Bel­gium’s prime min­is­ter is con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble com­pro­mise can­di­date, since, unlike Lux­em­burg, his coun­try is not under such strong Ger­man influ­ence. A can­di­date from Aus­tria would be par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ve­nient for Ger­many. For years, Aus­tria has will­ing­ly been ready to sup­port Berlin’s for­eign pol­i­cy projects. But above all, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment seeks to avoid hav­ing an offi­cial from Great Britain, who could thwart Ger­man projects.

Top Posts
As the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry’s Min­is­ter of State, Wern­er Hoy­er, explained Mon­day, Berlin is demand­ing two things in return for Ger­many’s renun­ci­a­tion on claims to the two top posts: Chan­cel­lor Merkel should have deci­sive influ­ence over the deci­sions and sec­ond­ly, Ger­many “lays great weight” on “rel­e­vant­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing” at admin­is­tra­tive lev­el posi­tions just below the coun­cil pres­i­dent and the for­eign minister.[1] These posi­tions, whose offi­cials, usu­al­ly far from the pub­lic eye, can shape the EU’s devel­op­ment, are con­sid­ered to be deci­sive­ly pow­er­ful. The gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Euro­pean Coun­cil will be among the posi­tions that will be deter­mined. It is the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who is the high­est admin­is­tra­tive head of the EU nations in Brus­sels. In the mean­time, the Ger­man chan­cel­lor has made it known that she insists for Ger­many the post of EU Com­mis­sion­er for Eco­nom­ic and Mon­e­tary Affairs — a great advan­tage for Europe’s strongest indus­tri­al nation. After all, Berlin is seek­ing the lead­ing posts in the new­ly cre­at­ed Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS), which, with­in the frame­work of EU exter­nal pol­i­cy is extreme­ly impor­tant.

Exter­nal Action Ser­vice
Ger­man EU func­tionar­ies and polit­i­cal advi­sors are insis­tent­ly plead­ing for giv­ing the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice spe­cial atten­tion. As Ger­hard Sabathil, the direc­tor for strat­e­gy, coor­di­na­tion and analy­sis in the EU’s Com­mis­sion’s gen­er­al direc­tion for exter­nal rela­tions, declared the EU must be more deci­sive in its han­dling of world pol­i­cy. Sabathil points to the replace­ment of the “G8” by the “G20”, which has dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the glob­al posi­tion of Europe. Where­as Europe was rep­re­sent­ed by 4 nations in G8, it has only 5 in G20. “The deci­sive ques­tion is to what extent can Europe com­pen­sate for this quan­ti­ta­tive loss of pow­er,” Sabathil is quot­ed as hav­ing said.[2] It is “absolute­ly essen­tial” that the EU’s influ­ence be rein­forced with a cohe­sive exter­nal and mil­i­tary pol­i­cy. The effec­tive­ness of the EU’s Exter­nal Action Ser­vice will not only depend on its for­eign min­is­ter but also the per­son­nel at the high­est lev­els of admin­is­tra­tion. This is the lev­el Berlin wants to have direct access to.

Merge
It is quite pos­si­ble to achieve sub­stan­tial glob­al polit­i­cal pow­er, accord­ing to Wern­er Wei­den­feld, one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man polit­i­cal advi­sors. Even though the EU’s glob­al involve­ment cur­rent­ly is rather rudi­men­ta­ry, Wei­den­feld writes in a recent arti­cle, “Europe has the poten­tial of a world pow­er — it has top posi­tions in glob­al com­merce, in glob­al pro­duc­tion as well as in research and edu­ca­tion.” Wei­den­fels resumes, “this poten­tial (...) only needs ade­quate organization”.[3] The set-up of the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice, due to start work in April 2010, is serv­ing this objec­tive, as well as the incor­po­ra­tion of all mil­i­tary plan­ning and oper­a­tional staff into the EEAS, that Berlin imposed against the will of Paris and London.[4] The EU’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and exter­nal pol­i­cy plan­ning will merge ren­der­ing con­sul­ta­tions between the dif­fer­ent branch­es of the bureau­cra­cy superfluous.[5]

EU Army
The Ger­man call for a joint Euro­pean Army (german-foreign-policy.com report­ed [6]), is gain­ing sup­port. Last week­end, the Ital­ian For­eign Min­is­ter, Fran­co Frat­ti­ni, announced that his gov­ern­ment will push for the cre­ation of a Euro­pean army, as soon as the Lis­bon Treaty comes into force on Decem­ber 1. If there were such a Euro­pean army, “we could pool our forces in Afghanistan,” Mr. Frat­ti­ni declared: “Italy could send planes, France could send tanks, Britain could send armored cars, and in this way we would opti­mize the use of our resources.”[7] Mr. Frat­ti­ni said the Lis­bon Treaty had estab­lished that if some coun­tries want to enter into van­guard coop­er­a­tion and estab­lish a com­mon defense, they can do so. Oth­er coun­tries could join lat­er. This merg­er would deprive indi­vid­ual Euro­pean nations the pos­si­bil­i­ty of defend­ing their sov­er­eign­ty. It would also sub­or­di­nate their armies to the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice in Brus­sels. And this would mean sub­or­di­na­tion under the pow­er that can cur­rent­ly call the shots: Ger­many.

[1] Hoy­er: Deutsch­land erhebt Anspruch auf wichtige EU-Ämter; AFP 16.11.2009
[2] Strate­gien für Europa in Zeit­en des Über­gangs; www.cap-lmu.de 10.11.2009
[3] Wern­er Wei­den­feld: Mein Europa der Zukun­ft; Go Sixt Poli­tik www.cap-lmu.de 28.09.2009
[4] Autonom oder ange­bun­den? Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 23.10.2009
[5] EU mil­i­tary chiefs ner­vous about Lis­bon Treaty impli­ca­tions; EUob­serv­er 05.11.2009
[6] see also The Hege­mon’s Army
[7] Italy’s For­eign Min­is­ter says post-Lis­bon EU needs a Euro­pean Army; The Sun­day Times 15.11.2009

“Poten­tial of a World Pow­er”; german-foreign-policy.com; 11/17/2009.

3. One of Ger­many’s major for­eign pol­i­cy goals vis a vis the EU is to dimin­ish or mar­gin­al­ize the British con­ser­v­a­tive influ­ence. Ger­many sees the Unit­ed King­dom’s Labor Par­ty as a friend­lier, less “EU skep­tic” enti­ty with which to work.

Ger­man gov­ern­ment advi­sors are insist­ing on con­cert­ed efforts to polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral­ize British EU-skep­tics. As explained in a recent paper pub­lished by the Ger­man Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al and Secu­ri­ty Affairs (SWP), the British Con­ser­v­a­tives’ atti­tude will have a “deci­sive influ­ence on help­ing to set the EU’s future radius of action,” because the ambi­tious pos­si­bil­i­ties in EU for­eign pol­i­cy mak­ing, opened through the Lis­bon Treaty’s com­ing into force, will depend, to a cer­tain extent, on Lon­don’s coop­er­a­tion. It is expect­ed that the elec­tions sched­uled in May will bring a gov­ern­ment change — from Labor to Con­ser­v­a­tive. The chair­man of the con­ser­v­a­tives, a flex­i­ble “Euro-prag­ma­tist,” is tak­ing a Euro-skep­tic posi­tion because of the bal­ance of forces with­in his par­ty, accord­ing to the authors of the SWP paper, but he can be brought to oppose his par­ty’s EU-crit­i­cal wing. The main rea­son for British EU-skep­ti­cism is the fear of the loss of the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty. This is not unjus­ti­fied, as can be seen in the con­tro­ver­sy around Greece’s nation­al debt. The Ger­man chan­cel­lor is threat­en­ing Athens that the EU needs to con­sid­er whether it should impose an aus­ter­i­ty bud­get on Greece — if nec­es­sary, even against the will of the elect­ed par­lia­ment in Athens.
Glob­al­ly Designed
Accord­ing to a recent paper pub­lished by the Ger­man Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al and Secu­ri­ty Affairs (SWP), Lon­don should be more firm­ly inte­grat­ed into EU for­eign pol­i­cy, if for no oth­er rea­son, than for Britain’s polit­i­cal eco­nom­ic sig­nif­i­cance. The authors explain that “Great Britain, the sec­ond largest eco­nom­ic realm in the EU, with Lon­don being a hub of inter­na­tion­al finances” could def­i­nite­ly not be ignored “because of its glob­al­ly designed for­eign and secu­ri­ty policy.”[1] Because of the Unit­ed King­dom’s well known EU-skep­ti­cism, con­ti­nen­tal Euro­pean coun­tries have paid “lit­tle atten­tion” to Lon­don. That was a mis­take. It would “behoove” EU mem­bers to insist on the British gov­ern­men­t’s firm engage­ment for Brus­sels after the Lis­bon Treaty takes effect. Attempts should be made to gain influ­ence on the Con­ser­v­a­tives, since they will prob­a­bly win par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in the spring.
EU-Prag­ma­tism
Because of the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the EU-crit­i­cal forces, the SWP describes the cur­rent devel­op­ment with­in the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty as “somber.” “The new gen­er­a­tion of the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­lia­men­tar­i­ans will fur­ther strength­en the EU-skep­ti­cal camp.” There­fore it will “soon­er or lat­er” be nec­es­sary to seek a clos­er inte­gra­tion into the EU. To achieve coop­er­a­tion with the cur­rent par­ty leader, David Cameron, is not out of the ques­tion. Up to now, his EU-skep­ti­cal state­ments have “main­ly been out of con­sid­er­a­tion of inter­nal par­ty pow­er strug­gles,” where­as he, him­self, tends more toward “con­ser­v­a­tive EU-prag­ma­tism.” This has become clear already through his back­ing off from hold­ing a ref­er­en­dum on the Lis­bon Treaty. The SWP authors sug­gest that on the basis of this sort of “con­ser­v­a­tive EU-prag­ma­tism” Cameron could “use his par­ty lead­er­ship posi­tion, to place the [EU-skep­ti­cal — gfp] rank and file under pres­sure.” Of course Cameron’s pre­vi­ous “fail­ure to set­tle accounts with the hard-lin­ers of his par­ty sends a sig­nal” even “to the dyed-in-wool opti­mists that there is still a lot of work to be done.” But it is worth the effort to attempt to con­tin­ue to mar­gin­al­ize the EU-skep­tics.
Con­struc­tive Poten­tial
Accord­ing to the SWP doc­u­ment, var­i­ous extra­ne­ous cir­cum­stances are advan­ta­geous to this project. The paper points out that the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the British Con­ser­v­a­tives influ­enc­ing the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment have been “weak­ened” since they broke off from the Euro­pean Peo­ple’s Par­ty, form­ing a new group (“Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists”) this year. The authors are also of the opin­ion that the US gov­ern­ment, which is so impor­tant to Great Britain, is, under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, increas­ing­ly see­ing “Britain’s sig­nif­i­cance with­in the EU as a con­struc­tive rather than a con­flict poten­tial.” There­fore the con­di­tions are not dis­ad­van­ta­geous for tak­ing action against the EU-skep­tics. One can­not avoid the task of forc­ing the EU-crit­i­cal cir­cles into retreat, because even if Labor — against all expec­ta­tions — does remain in gov­ern­ment, it can “not be exclud­ed that the nation­al view­point, will not come to the fore” — mean­ing the EU-skep­ti­cal ten­den­cy. That is why, in any case, an “open debate” with and in Great Britain around the exten­sion of EU activ­i­ties must be ini­ti­at­ed. The SWP authors’ sug­ges­tions con­cern­ing how this should be done remain non-com­mit­tal and rather ambigu­ous.
Aus­ter­i­ty Pol­i­cy
The main rea­son for British EU-skep­ti­cism remains the fear that in the future the EU could usurp the sov­er­eign­ty of the nation-states and bla­tant­ly rule the mem­ber states, even Great Britain from abroad, bypass­ing the elect­ed nation­al par­lia­ments. That this fear is jus­ti­fi­able can be seen in the recent devel­op­ments in Greece. Greece’s nation­al debt has reached about 120 per­cent of its BNP, which is twice what is allowed under the EU’s Sta­bil­i­ty and Growth Pact. Sev­er­al EU states, includ­ing Ger­many, are exert­ing strong pres­sure on Athens to reduce the lev­el of debts at all costs. Whether this is a jus­ti­fied demand, is a mat­ter of dis­pute. The Prime Min­is­ter of Lux­em­burg, Jean-Claude Junck­er con­sid­ers “the per­spec­tive being paint­ed by some, as if Greece is on the brink of nation­al bank­rupt­cy, is at vari­ance with my observations.”[2] Axel Weber, Pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Bank, on the oth­er hand, demands that Athens impose a rigid aus­ter­i­ty pol­i­cy, that would also dras­ti­cal­ly cut salaries.[3]
Still Inde­pen­dent
The Ger­man chan­cel­lor is demand­ing that Brus­sels should be grant­ed new rights of inter­ven­tion into cen­tral areas of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, for such cas­es. If, for exam­ple, an elect­ed par­lia­ment refus­es to enact sub­stan­tial cuts in wages, Brus­sels must have the pow­er to order these cuts against their will. “Nation­al par­lia­ments do not like to have things imposed,” observes Angela Merkel and demands “we have to dis­cuss this type of problem.”[4] The extent of this sort of inter­ven­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ing the small­er EU nations, plac­ing them under de fac­to direct con­trol of the EU hege­mon­ic pow­ers, in par­tic­u­lar Ger­many, has been antic­i­pat­ed by the Greek Prime Min­is­ter Gior­gos Papan­dreou. Accord­ing to Papan­dreou, the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty is under threat for the first time since 1974, through the exter­nal pres­sure on Athens to reduce its lev­el of debts at all costs. In 1974 the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in Greece was replaced by a par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy. Papan­dreou added that Athens itself must insti­tute the reduc­tions demand­ed by Berlin and oth­ers. This is “the only way to insure that Greece does not lose its independence.”[5]
[1] Mar­tin Kre­mer, Rod­er­ick Parkes: Großbri­tan­nien: “Being nice to a scep­tic?” SWP-Aktuell 66, Dezem­ber 2009
[2] EU macht Druck auf Griechen­land; Han­dels­blatt 10.12.2009
[3] Bun­des­bank fordert Griechen­land zum Sparen auf; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 10.12.2009
[4] EU ver­weigert Griechen­land Soforthil­fe; Spiegel Online 10.12.2009
[5] Bun­des­bank fordert Griechen­land zum Sparen auf; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 10.12.2009

“The End of Sov­er­eign­ty’; german-foreign-policy.com; 12/14/2009.

4. Antic­i­pat­ing a Con­ser­v­a­tive vic­to­ry in the upcom­ing British elec­tions, Ger­many is pres­sur­ing the EU to speed­i­ly insti­tu­tion­al­ize changes to the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice to make it more ser­vice­able to Ger­man inter­ests.

Among the for­eign pol­i­cy goals being pur­sued by the Euro­pean Free Alliance group with­in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment is the for­ma­tion of a “Greater Ger­many” that would include Aus­tria, as well as parts of what are now Switzer­land and Italy! This is, of course, the Greater Ger­many that was real­ized for a time by Hitler.

Note that the Greens are part of this alliance. In the past, we have not­ed the Green Par­ty’s fas­cist affil­i­a­tions and their efforts at pro­mot­ing the frag­men­ta­tion of var­i­ous Euro­pean states.

Berlin is insist­ing on access to essen­tial posts in the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS). Accord­ing to news reports, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is demand­ing that the post of EEAS Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary be giv­en to a Ger­man. Lead­ing per­son­nel from the Chan­cellery and the For­eign Min­istry are being sug­gest­ed. The gen­er­al sec­re­tary heads the admin­is­tra­tion and is sec­ond only to the EU High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for For­eign Affairs and Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, Cather­ine Ash­ton, who is con­sid­ered to be very weak, mean­ing that a Ger­man EEAS gen­er­al sec­re­tary would have a free hand. The struc­tur­ing of the EEAS is one of Berlin’s most essen­tial objec­tives since the Lis­bon Treaty took effect, rein­forc­ing the EU on its path toward becom­ing a world pow­er. As was expressed in Berlin’s for­eign min­istry, the basic fea­tures of the new admin­is­tra­tion must be insti­tu­tion­al­ized by April 2010, so that the British Con­ser­v­a­tives, expect­ed to be the vic­tors of the next par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in the spring of 2010, will not be able to have any influ­ence. They are capa­ble of putting up seri­ous resis­tance to Ger­man hege­mon­ic pol­i­cy.
Accom­mo­da­tion Claims
The debate around the struc­tur­ing of the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS) is becom­ing more heat­ed since the Lis­bon Treaty took effect Decem­ber 1. Whether this new admin­is­tra­tion should be an appendage of the EU Com­mis­sion or be an inde­pen­dent struc­ture is one of the issues of this con­tro­ver­sy. Berlin is in favor of the EEAS being inde­pen­dent of the Com­mis­sion. It would thus be more acces­si­ble to EU mem­ber nations. A cen­tral pow­er strug­gle is around the ques­tion of who will get key posi­tions in that admin­is­tra­tion. The approx. 5,000 assis­tants cur­rent­ly employed in the EU Com­mis­sion’s for­eign pol­i­cy struc­tures want to be accom­mo­dat­ed. The EU nations are demand­ing that at least one-third of the future posi­tions in the EEAS, main­ly lead­er­ship posi­tions, be set aside for their nation­al personnel.[1] Since con­tra­dict­ing claims have to be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion, it is esti­mat­ed that the final size of the EEAS will be between 6,000 and 8,000 employ­ees.
Reli­able
But Berlin is press­ing for haste. Next spring, in May 2010 at the lat­est, par­lia­men­tary elec­tions will be held in Great Britain. The replace­ment of the Labor gov­ern­ment by a Con­ser­v­a­tive one is con­sid­ered cer­tain. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is doing every­thing pos­si­ble that the basic struc­tur­al fea­tures of the EEAS will be com­plet­ed by April 2010. A Con­ser­v­a­tive British gov­ern­ment could “oth­er­wise com­pli­cate the imple­men­ta­tion of the EEAS,”[2] as is diplo­mat­i­cal­ly assert­ed in the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry, where it is feared that Lon­don could seri­ous­ly resist Ger­man plans to use EU For­eign Pol­i­cy to rise to world pow­er sta­tus. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[3]) The Labor gov­ern­ment reli­ably accom­mo­dat­ed Ger­man aspi­ra­tions on deci­sive issues, for exam­ple the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Lis­bon Treaty. The chair­man of the Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Euro­pean par­lia­men­tary cau­cus, Mar­tin Schulz, not­ed with grat­i­tude that dur­ing the vote on the treaty, the Labor MP, Cather­ine Ash­ton, was its ded­i­cat­ed pro­mot­er in the House of Lords.[4]
“Dif­fi­cult Part­ner”
The Ger­man estab­lish­ment is divid­ed on the ques­tion of what role Lon­don should have in the EU. The chair­man of the group The Greens/European Free Alliance in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, Rein­hard Buetikofer is against pro­pos­als to more intense­ly ostra­cize Great Britain. There are par­ties in his par­lia­men­tary group that are call­ing for the breakup of numer­ous Euro­pean nation-states. The orga­ni­za­tion Euro­pean Free Alliance (EFA) has pub­lished a map show­ing a greater Ger­many expand­ed to include Aus­tria, as well as regions of Switzer­land and Italy. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[5]) EFA part­ner, Buetikofer says that he “does­n’t place much stock in the dis­cus­sion about whether we would be bet­ter off, if we did­n’t have the British around.” One has to rather “pos­si­bly give a dif­fi­cult part­ner respon­si­bil­i­ty.” “Bet­ter have them inside the tent piss­ing out, than the oth­er way around.”[6]
“The biggest Wimp”
Cather­ine Ash­ton’s appoint­ment as EU High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for For­eign Affairs and Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy is also to Ger­many’s advan­tage. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment was par­tic­u­lar­ly set on pre­vent­ing a strong British EU for­eign pol­i­cy chief — some­one like David Miliband for exam­ple. But Berlin does not con­sid­er Ash­ton a threat. “Every­one has dri­ven it home to her that she is he biggest wimp under the sun,” accord­ing to Rein­hard Bütikofer.[7] Berlin is now insist­ing on the post of gen­er­al sec­re­tary in the EEAS, the high­est rank­ing EEAS offi­cial, who will have deci­sive influ­ence on EU for­eign pol­i­cy, giv­en the weak­ness of the High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. It was to the Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s advan­tage that it had renounced on the posts of EU Coun­cil Pres­i­dent and EU High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for For­eign Affairs and Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy and that it had not insist­ed on anoth­er Ger­man being EU Indus­try Com­mis­sion­er. The fact that Gün­ther Oet­tinger was appoint­ed only EU Ener­gy Com­mis­sion­er is regret­ted in Berlin.[8] One opin­ion in Berlin is that Brus­sels is now indebt­ed to Ger­many.
Cen­tral Com­mand Post
Two can­di­dates are report­ed to be in con­sid­er­a­tion, with Christoph Heusgen, the Ger­man chan­cel­lor’s chief for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er, being the favorite.[9] Heusgen, for­mer chief of the Euro­pean affairs divi­sion in the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry, had direct­ed the Pol­i­cy Unit of the EU’s High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Javier Solana from 1999 to 2005, which was con­sid­ered to be the cen­tral com­mand post for EU for­eign pol­i­cy deci­sions. Heusgen had had a major impact on the begin­nings of the EU’s Com­mon For­eign and Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy (CFSP). He also par­tic­i­pat­ed in draft­ing the so called EU secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy adopt­ed by the Euro­pean Coun­cil in Decem­ber 2003.[10] Since 2005 Heusgen has been work­ing in the Ger­man Chan­cellery.
Sev­er­al Times Dai­ly
Hel­ga Maria Schmid is also pro­posed as a can­di­date for the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary post. Like Heusgen, Schmid had worked in the Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Klaus Kinkel’s office in the 1990s, and lat­er served as office man­ag­er in For­eign Min­is­ter Joseph Fis­cher’s office. Then, at the begin­ning of 2006, she took on Heusgen’s ear­li­er job in Brus­sels — in the direc­torate of Solana’s polit­i­cal staff.[11] Speak­ing of her work at the begin­ning of 2007, she report­ed, “I make calls sev­er­al times dai­ly to the Chan­cellery and the For­eign Ministry.”[12] Should she or Heusgen be giv­en the top posi­tions in the EEAS under Ash­ton, Berlin would direct EU for­eign pol­i­cy with­out rival­ry. Both can­di­dates are con­sid­ered not only to be well con­nect­ed, but high­ly assertive as well.
[1], [2] Angst vor Cameron treibt EU-Auße­namt voran; EurActiv.de 24.11.2009
[3] see also Welt­macht­poten­zial
[4] New for­eign pol­i­cy chief to start work next week; EUob­serv­er 23.11.2009
[5] see also The Ger­man Eth­nic Mod­el (III) and The Ger­man Eth­nic Mod­el (IV)
[6], [7] Bütikofer: “Nicht immer hat die Mehrheit recht”; EurActiv.de 03.12.2009
[8] Neue EU-Kom­mis­sion: Macht für Paris, Behelf­sjob für Berlin; Spiegel online 27.11.2009
[9] Chef­ber­ater von Merkel soll nach Brüs­sel; Welt Online 05.12.2009
[10] see also A Greater Role in Europe
[11] Chef­ber­ater von Merkel soll nach Brüs­sel; Welt Online 05.12.2009
[12] Die wichtig­sten 10 Deutschen in Brüs­sel; Welt Online 02.01.2007

“Assertive­ness”; german-foreign-policy.com; 12/08/2009.

5. Fur­ther devel­op­ing pan-Ger­man goals for the geo­graph­i­cal restruc­tur­ing of Europe, the broad­cast high­lights plans to effect the seces­sion of the North Tyrol from Italy, reunit­ing it with Aus­tria. The Free­dom Par­ty of Austria–founded as a vehi­cle for the polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Aus­tri­an Nazis who had served the Third Reich and head­ed (until his death) by Jorg Haider– has been a major agi­ta­tor on behalf of this goal.

If real­ized, this will reca­pit­u­late the sta­tus quo of that region under the Hab­s­burgs. (In numer­ous broad­casts, we have not­ed the House of Haps­burg’s efforts on behalf of seces­sion-prone eth­nic groups, whose inde­pen­dence would frag­ment larg­er nations, as well as the Hab­s­burgs’ mar­i­tal links to the Thyssen-Borne­misza fam­i­ly, part of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

In this con­text, it is impor­tant to note that the North­ern League of Umber­to Bossi, part of Sil­vio Berlus­coni’s fas­cist coali­tion in Italy, also favors seces­sion of North­ern parts of Italy.

Oth­er EU mem­ber states fac­ing Ger­man-backed seces­sion­ist move­ments include Hun­gary, Roma­nia and Spain.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Ger­many has grant­ed pass­ports to eth­nic Ger­man cit­i­zens of oth­er Euro­pean nations, such as Poland. Hitler’s war of aggres­sion was pred­i­cat­ed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure on the alleged mis­treat­ment of eth­nic Ger­mans in oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries.

Eth­nic chau­vin­ist forces in Aus­tria are demand­ing the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of Ger­man “eth­nic rights” to the Ger­man speak­ing pop­u­la­tion of north­ern Italy. Accord­ing to these forces, the gov­ern­ment in Vien­na should issue Aus­tri­an pass­ports to the approx. 300,000 north­ern Ital­ians (South Tyroleans), whose ances­tors had been Aus­tri­an up until the First World War. Ger­many has a long prac­tice of absorb­ing the cit­i­zens of its East Euro­pean neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, but this would be the first time involv­ing a West Euro­pean neigh­bor. This demand accom­pa­nies talks about the addi­tion of a para­graph to the Aus­tri­an Con­sti­tu­tion, declar­ing Vien­na the “pro­tec­tive pow­er” of the “South Tyroleans” — a direct infringe­ment on the nation­al sov­er­eign­ty of the EU mem­ber nation, Italy. At the same time demands are gain­ing momen­tum in South Tyrol for an eth­nic based right of seces­sion, also along the lines of Ger­man con­cepts. Already last spring, the word was going around in North­ern Ital­ian Green Par­ty cir­cles that the foun­da­tion of a “Free State South Tyrol,” along the lines of the Liecht­en­stein mod­el was being con­sid­ered. The eth­nic chau­vin­ist rightwing is seek­ing annex­a­tion by Aus­tria.
Pro­tec­tive Pow­er
Aus­tri­a’s new “South Tyrol” debate orig­i­nat­ed with plans to amend the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion to include a pro­tec­tive pow­er clause. This would mean that Aus­tria would offi­cial­ly declare itself the “pro­tec­tive pow­er” of all Ger­man lan­guage cit­i­zens of north­ern Italy. These plans, with which Vien­na would pre­sume a de fac­to right of inter­ven­tion in north­ern Italy, have been in dis­cus­sion for sev­er­al years;[1] but a cor­re­spond­ing 2006 res­o­lu­tion, accept­ed by near­ly all par­ties rep­re­sent­ed in par­lia­ment (SPÖ, ÖVP; BZÖ and FPÖ), has yet to be imple­ment­ed. The rul­ing gov­ern­ment coali­tion part­ner, Aus­tri­an Peo­ple’s Par­ty (ÖVP), would now like to see it imple­ment­ed. The spokesper­son for South Tyrolean Affairs of the con­ser­v­a­tive ÖVP, Her­mann Gahr, announced “that a com­mon res­o­lu­tion will be tabled in par­lia­ment by December.”[2] The pro­tec­tive pow­er claim will not be mere­ly insert­ed into the pre­am­ble of the con­sti­tu­tion, but will be expound­ed upon in its own para­graph. Protests from Rome, accord­ing to Gahr, have no impact. The South Tyrolean Affairs spokesper­son of the ÖVP declared “this con­cerns the acknowl­edge­ment of Aus­tri­a’s polit­i­cal approach, already in prac­tice for decades.”
Con­ver­gence
The debate has grown sharp­er through a demand by the FPÖ. The par­ty tabled a motion for a res­o­lu­tion in the Nation­al Coun­cil in Vien­na, in which all “for­mer Aus­tri­ans” in north­ern Italy, and their descen­dents be grant­ed Aus­tri­an cit­i­zen­ship. “For­mer Aus­tri­ans” are for­mer cit­i­zens of the Hab­s­burg Empire, to which South Tyrol had belonged until the end of World War I. Near­ly all of the Ger­man speak­ing cit­i­zens in north­ern Italy trace their ori­gins back to this group. The FPÖ’s motion, call­ing for plac­ing the approx. 300,000 Ger­man speak­ing North Ital­ians under the pro­tec­tion of Vien­na, by issu­ing them Aus­tri­an pass­ports, is under con­sid­er­a­tion in the Inte­ri­or Com­mit­tee of the Aus­tri­an Nation­al Coun­cil. As Wern­er Neubauer, speak­er for South Tyrolean Affairs of the FPÖ, open­ly declared, this motion is “about convergence.”[3] Already in Octo­ber, the South Tyrolean Free­dom, a north­ern Ital­ian par­ty, call­ing for South Tyrol’s seces­sion from Italy, was in Vien­na, accord­ing to the par­ty, for “talks on the ques­tion of dou­ble cit­i­zen­ship” with “the par­ties rep­re­sent­ed in the Aus­tri­an Nation­al Coun­cil.” Accord­ing to a region­al par­lia­men­tar­i­an of that seces­sion­ist orga­ni­za­tion, “a basic approval of dual cit­i­zen­ship for South Tyroleans could be dis­cerned among all of the par­ties present at the talks.”[4]
Ger­man Prac­tice
The eth­nic chau­vin­ist forces in Vien­na and North­ern Italy, who sup­port these plans, can invoke the prac­tice in use by Ger­many since the 1990s. The Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many issues Ger­man speak­ing cit­i­zens of its east­ward neigh­bor­ing coun­tries Ger­man papers, trans­form­ing, for exam­ple 200,000 for­mer Poles into Ger­mans. This Ger­man prac­tice, which com­plete­ly ignores the nation­al sov­er­eign­ty of its bor­der­ing coun­tries, has repeat­ed­ly been the source of ten­sions in east­ern and south­east­ern Europe. Back in the 1990s, Italy offered Ital­ian speak­ing Slove­ni­ans the pos­si­bil­i­ty of obtain­ing Ital­ian cit­i­zen­ship. In Hun­gary mea­sures are cur­rent­ly being planned that would affect approx. 500,000 Slo­va­kians and 1.3 mil­lion Rumanians.[5] Ruma­nia, on the oth­er hand is toy­ing with the idea of grant­i­ng about a mil­lion Mol­da­vians (“eth­nic Ruma­ni­ans”) Ruman­ian cit­i­zen­ship. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[6]) Mol­davia has a pop­u­la­tion of approx. 3.3 mil­lion.
Ger­man Tra­di­tion
While claims of pro­tec­tive pow­er and the incor­po­ra­tion of Ital­ian cit­i­zens are being dis­cussed in Aus­tria, demands for an eth­nic based right of seces­sion are gain­ing momen­tum in North­ern Italy. In Bolzano, South Tyrol, the Novem­ber 22 — 23, 1969 ref­er­en­dum lead­ing to the so-called auton­o­my pack­age will soon be com­mem­o­rat­ed. This pack­age grant­ed exten­sive spe­cial rights to the Ger­man speak­ing minor­i­ty in North­ern Italy. The Ger­man minor­i­ty sub­se­quent­ly renounced its plans to secede — but only tem­porar­i­ly, as the cur­rent devel­op­ment shows. On the occa­sion of the 40 anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, demands for an eth­nic based “right to self-deter­mi­na­tion” can be heard, grant­i­ng eth­nic minori­ties the right of deci­sion to secede from the nation. Inter­na­tion­al law does not rec­og­nize such a right; but it cor­re­sponds to the tra­di­tion of Ger­man eth­nic pol­i­cy. (German-foreign-policiy.com reported.[7]) “Cheers to the pack­age, but we pre­fer the road to free­dom”, one could hear in the Union for South Tyrol Par­ty, which is demand­ing the “right to self-deter­mi­na­tion,” includ­ing an option to secede from Italy.[8]
Courage to Change
Last Sat­ur­day’s meet­ing of the “South Tyrolean Free­dom” can be con­sid­ered par­a­dig­mat­ic. The “South Tyrolean Free­dom” includes the milieu of the for­mer “South Tyrolean Bombers”, eth­nic chau­vin­ist ter­ror­ists, who, in the 1960s and lat­er, were pur­su­ing South Tyrol’s seces­sion from Italy with — occa­sion­al dead­ly — bomb attacks. At the meet­ing, Her­mann Gahr, ÖVP speak­er for South Tyrolean Affairs, demand­ed more “courage for change in South Tyrol”. The for­mer Aus­tri­an jus­tice min­is­ter demand­ed that Vien­na inten­si­fy its strug­gle for the “preser­va­tion and devel­op­ment of self deter­mi­na­tion of the South Tyrolean peo­ple sep­a­rat­ed from Tyrol.” A par­lia­men­tar­i­an of the “South Tyrolean Free­dom” in the state assem­bly declared that there remains only “10 to 15 years” to “exer­cise the right to self-deter­mi­na­tion” of the Ger­man speak­ing pop­u­la­tion because of the steady influx of “foreigners”.[9] The South Tyrolean Free­dom has observ­er sta­tus in the “Euro­pean Free Alliance” that unites orga­ni­za­tions from all over Europe seek­ing seces­sion. In the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, the “Alliance” coop­er­ates with the Ger­man Green Par­ty in a par­lia­men­tary cau­cus. (This map excerpt is tak­en from the web­page of the “Euro­pean Free Alliance” pre­sent­ing a “Tyrol” formed through the uni­fi­ca­tion of the Aus­tri­an fed­er­al land, Tyrol, with South Tyrol join­ing a new Greater Ger­many.)
Liecht­en­stein Mod­el
These cur­rent demands for seces­sion are not lim­it­ed to eth­nic rights. Already last spring, Green Par­ty cir­cles in North­ern Italy were dis­cussing the found­ing of a “Free State South Tyrol”, “Liecht­en­stein Model”.[10] The devel­op­ment shows the real pur­pose behind the “South Tyrolean Auton­o­my”, so heav­i­ly praised in Berlin. Where­as Ger­many is repeat­ed­ly using the South Tyrolean auton­o­my rights as a mod­el for the peace­ful set­tle­ment of seces­sion­ist con­flicts while safe­guard­ing the ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty of the coun­tries con­cerned, the cur­rent debate in Aus­tria and North­ern Italy show that the seces­sion­ist poten­tial has only been sup­pressed — until there is anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to secede. This is not only dis­as­trous for Italy, but for all those states whose minori­ties seek advice on auton­o­my rights and their imple­men­ta­tion in Bolzano — par­tic­u­lar­ly in the “Euro­pean Acad­e­my Bozen”. Among those who sought advice over the past few years were Iraq [11] and Tibetan sep­a­ratists [12]. God­fa­ther of the found­ing of this “Euro­pean Acad­e­my Bozen” was the For­eign Min­istry of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. The acad­e­my coop­er­ates with front insti­tu­tions of Berlin’s eth­nic chau­vin­ist for­eign pol­i­cy, includ­ing the Euro­pean Cen­ter for Minor­i­ty Issues [13] as well as the Fed­er­al Union of Euro­pean Nation­al­i­ties [14].
[1] see also Schutz­macht-Klausel
[2] “Schutz­macht für Südtirol kommt in die Ver­fas­sung”; Tirol­er Tageszeitung 15.11.2009
[3] Diplo­ma­tis­che Span­nun­gen wegen Südtirol-Engage­ment; Tirol­er Tageszeitung 23.11.2009
[4] JA zur dop­pel­ten Staats­bürg­er­schaft: In Wien bere­its Gespräche mit allen Parteien geführt; www.suedtiroler-freiheit.com 25.11.2009
[5] see also The Ger­man Eth­nic Mod­el (I)
[6] see also Das deutsche Blutsmod­ell (II)
[7] see also Self Deter­mi­na­tion, Logik der Dekom­po­si­tion and Moral Basis
[8] “Paket in Ehren, aber bess­er der Frei­heit ent­ge­gen”; Südtirol Online 23.11.2009
[9] “Für Selb­st­bes­tim­mungsrecht bleiben uns noch 10 bis 15 Jahre”; Südtirol Online 22.11.2009
[10] “Eine über­aus reizvolle Idee”; ff — Das Südtirol­er Wochen­magazin 12/2009
[11] see also Mul­ti-Par­ti­san Direc­torate
[12] see also Strate­gies of Attri­tion (III) and À la Südtirol
[13] see also Hin­ter­grund­bericht: Das Europäis­che Zen­trum für Min­der­heit­en­fra­gen
[14] see also Fre­und und Kol­lege, Schwe­lende Kon­flik­te, Cul­ti­vat­ing Rela­tion­ships and Hin­ter­grund­bericht: Die Föder­al­is­tis­che Union Europäis­ch­er Volks­grup­pen

“Ger­man Eth­nic Mod­el (III); german-foreign-policy.com; 11/26/2009.

6. In addi­tion, Ger­many and its Green and Euro­pean Free Alliance allies have been push­ing for the seces­sion of Cat­alo­nia from Spain. Note that Cat­alo­nia has estab­lished a work­ing rela­tion­ship with Bad Wuert­tem­berg in Ger­many, giv­ing it eco­nom­ic advan­tages. (Bad Wuert­tem­berg also has sim­i­lar rela­tion­ships with Lom­bardy in [North­ern] Italy and the Rhone-Alps region of France.)

It will be inter­est­ing to see how Spain’s dire eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion affects the Cat­alon­ian seces­sion­ist ques­tion. Spain is among the EU mem­bers fac­ing bankruptcy/default or requir­ing bailout from EU/Germany or the IMF.

Will Cata­lan inde­pen­dence be fur­thered by this cri­sis?

It is also inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that eth­nic groups that real­ize their “inde­pen­dence” through the assis­tance of Ger­many could even­tu­al­ly evolve into polit­i­cal allies of Ger­many with­in the EU–voting in such a way as to max­i­mize Ger­man con­trol of the union.

Cat­alon­ian seces­sion­ists are pro­gress­ing toward the eth­nic dis­man­tle­ment of Spain with ref­er­en­dums to be held in 161 cities and com­mu­ni­ties. Sched­uled for mid-Decem­ber, ref­er­en­dums will be held in one-sixth of Cat­alo­ni­a’s munic­i­pal­i­ties on a — non-bind­ing for now — res­o­lu­tion on seces­sion from Spain and the found­ing an inde­pen­dent coun­try. Seces­sion­ists in oth­er parts of the coun­try — the Basque Region and Gali­cia — are care­ful­ly watch­ing what hap­pens. The ref­er­en­dums are pro­vid­ing new impe­tus to the Ger­man strat­e­gy of restruc­tur­ing Europe along eth­nic lines. The Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many pro­vid­ed Cat­alon­ian seces­sion­ism rel­e­vant sup­port over the past few years, most recent­ly, two years ago in the frame­work of the Frank­furt Book Fair. Berlin’s for­eign pol­i­cy front orga­ni­za­tions have long since cat­a­logued the Cata­lan as a “Volks­gruppe” (an eth­nic enti­ty) jus­ti­fy­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty to spe­cial rights. Cata­lan seces­sion­ists are being spo­ken of in the same breath as oth­er eth­nic minori­ties demand­ing sim­i­lar autonomous rights, includ­ing the Bre­tons in France and the Welsh in Great Britain.
I’m Cata­lan
Ref­er­en­dums will be held Decem­ber 13 in 161 of the 900 Cata­lan munic­i­pal­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ties, to deter­mine whether Cat­alo­nia should secede from Spain. The ref­er­en­dum is not yet bind­ing. They exclude the largest region­al cities (Barcelona, Leri­da and Tar­rag­o­na). A response is sought to the ques­tion: “Are you in favor of the Cata­lan nation being an inde­pen­dent, demo­c­ra­t­ic and social wel­fare nation in a Euro­pean Union of peoples?”[1] The ref­er­en­dum was ini­ti­at­ed by an orga­ni­za­tion call­ing itself “I’m Cata­lan. I Love Free­dom.” The ref­er­en­dum is being flanked by an effec­tive PR cam­paign, which includ­ed the chair­man of the seces­sion­ist par­ty, Esquer­ra Repub­li­cana de Catalun­ya recent­ly hoist­ing the Cata­lan seces­sion­ist flag on the high­est moun­tain peak in the region. The seces­sion­ists are also try­ing to inter­na­tion­al­ize their cause. They have applied in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for con­crete steps toward inde­pen­dence and are seek­ing inter­na­tion­al observers for the Decem­ber 13 ref­er­en­dum, par­tic­u­lar­ly observers from the OSCE and the UN.
Dis­ad­van­taged
A Span­ish Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court deci­sion rel­e­vant to the seces­sion­ist plans is expect­ed with­in the close time­frame of the ref­er­en­dum. Three years ago the region­al par­lia­ment in Barcelona passed new auton­o­my statutes, declar­ing exten­sive spe­cial rights for Cat­alo­nia. There is not only con­tro­ver­sy about the stip­u­la­tion of auton­o­my sta­tus, that Cat­alo­nia is an inde­pen­dent “nation” and the claim that Cat­alo­nia deserves his­tor­i­cal priv­i­leges. Most con­tro­ver­sial is the oblig­a­tion that all res­i­dents of the region learn Cata­lan. Since some time, this has led, to bar­ri­cad­ing ten­den­cies. Two years ago, philoso­pher and region­al par­lia­men­tar­i­an in Barcelona, Anto­nio Rob­les com­plained to german-foreign-policy.com, that “if one was not flu­ent in Cata­lan, (...) it was very dif­fi­cult to work in the Cata­lan com­mu­ni­ca­tion indus­try” — a mas­sive dis­ad­van­tage to the cit­i­zens from oth­er regions of Spain.[2] If the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court rules the reg­u­la­tions in the Auton­o­my Statutes — which cod­i­fies this dis­crim­i­na­to­ry devel­op­ment — uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, mas­sive protests are expect­ed.
New Bor­ders in Europe
Ger­many, the EU trail-blaz­er of eth­nic priv­i­leges and secession,[3] is no inno­cent bystander in these devel­op­ments in Cat­alo­nia. Since the late 1980s, the Ger­man land Baden Wuert­tem­berg has main­tained a “region­al part­ner­ship” with Cat­alo­nia and two oth­er regions (Lom­bardy in Italy and the Rhone-Alps region of France). This “region­al part­ner­ship” brings this

north­east­ern Span­ish seces­sion­ist region eco­nom­ic advan­tages, strength­en­ing it in rela­tion­ship to oth­er regions of Spain.[4] The sep­a­ratists are polit­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed also by the Ger­man Green Par­ty. The Greens are mem­bers of the same Euro­pean par­lia­men­tary cau­cus as the “Euro­pean Free Alliance”, which includes sev­er­al pro­po­nents of Cata­lan seces­sion as well as oth­er separatists.[5] The “Euro­pean Free Alliance” is not only sup­port­ing the seces­sion of Cat­alo­nia, for years it has been cam­paign­ing with a map with com­plete­ly new Euro­pean bor­ders: Spain is divid­ed into sev­en new coun­tries, Ger­many has annexed Aus­tria, parts of Switzer­land and North­ern Italy (South Tyrol). The ter­ri­to­ry of France is half its cur­rent size. Accord­ing to the map of the friends of the Ger­man Greens, the Bre­tagne, as well as the entire south of the coun­try, the fic­tive “Occ­i­tan” have seced­ed. The map insti­gates diverse seces­sion­ist move­ments through­out Europe and is pub­lished in full knowl­edge of the Yugoslav wars of dis­in­te­gra­tion. German-foreign-policy.com doc­u­ments excerpts here.
Part­ner Nations
Ger­many had cre­at­ed a new impulse for Cata­lan seces­sion­ists at the Frank­furt Book Fair, in the fall of 2007. Usu­al­ly a coun­try is cho­sen as “part­ner nation,” to be inten­sive­ly pro­mot­ed at the book fair. But this time it chose Cat­alo­nia, a region,

seek­ing to become a nation. But not all Cata­lan writ­ers were to be hon­ored at that book fair, only those, whose works were writ­ten in Cata­lan. Authors using the nation­al Castil­ian Span­ish, were strict­ly exclud­ed. A map show­ing a “Cat­alo­nia” nation, extend­ing from the Span­ish coast­line north of Valen­cia to south­ern France (Per­pig­nan), incor­po­rat­ing both the Balearic Islands as well as Andorra,[6] was dis­trib­uted at the book fair. The pres­i­dent of the Balearic region­al gov­ern­ment announced, also at this book fair, that his Islands would inten­si­fy their cul­tur­al coop­er­a­tion with the Cata­lan region — an agree­ment pro­vid­ing fur­ther impe­tus toward separatism.[7] These activ­i­ties take on greater sig­nif­i­cance through the fact that the Ger­man for­eign min­istry is an offi­cial part­ner of the Frank­furt Book Fair. The main Euro­pean pow­er’s tol­er­a­tion of their activ­i­ties was an impor­tant sym­bol for the seces­sion­ists in Cat­alo­nia. (The excerpt of the map is also tak­en from the map pub­lished by the “Euro­pean Free Alliance.”)
Weak­en the Adver­sary
Front orga­ni­za­tions of Berlin’s for­eign pol­i­cy have long since cat­a­logued the Cata­lans as a sep­a­rate “eth­nic enti­ty,” jus­ti­fy­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty to spe­cial rights. The Fed­er­al Union of Euro­pean Nation­al­i­ties (FUEN) speaks of the Cata­lans in the same breath as not only the Basques but also the Bre­tons in France or the Scot­tish and the Welsh in Great Britain.[8] The eth­nic sub­di­vi­sion of Europe, as is sup­port­ed in Ger­many, lays the foun­da­tion not only for demands for auton­o­my but also for seces­sion­ist aspi­ra­tions, such as are cur­rent­ly esca­lat­ing in Cat­alo­nia. This ulti­mate­ly weak­ens the nation-states com­pet­ing with Ger­many for influ­ence in Europe.
[1] Spanis­che Unab­hängigkeitsspiele; Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 19.11.2009
[2] see also Wie ein Staat
[3] Since the begin­ning of the 90s, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many sup­port­ed Yugoslavi­a’s dis­in­te­gra­tion along eth­nic lines and favor­ably assist­ed the dis­so­lu­tion of Czecho­slo­va­kia. Var­i­ous front orga­ni­za­tions of Berlin’s for­eign pol­i­cy are sup­port­ing lin­guis­tic minori­ties in their strug­gles for spe­cial rights. See also Cul­ti­vat­ing Rela­tion­ships, Hin­ter­grund­bericht: Die Föder­al­is­tis­che Union Europäis­ch­er Volks­grup­pen and Hin­ter­grund­bericht: Das Europäis­che Zen­trum für Min­der­heit­en­fra­gen
[4] see also Zukun­ft als Volk
[5] see also The Ger­man Eth­nic Mod­el (III)
[6] see also Lan­guage Strug­gle
[7] see also Eth­nic Europe
[8] www.non-kinstate.fuen.org

“The Ger­man Eth­nic Mod­el (IV)”; german-foreign-policy.com; 2/12/2009.

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR #700 Deutschland Uber Alles”

  1. [...] dis­cussed in FTR #700, Cather­ine Ash­ton was seen as being a use­ful tool for the real­iza­tion of Ger­man [...]

    Posted by Snowden’s Ride, Part 9: Catherine Ashton, EU Defense and Intelligence Structure and the Muslim Brotherhood | The Freedom Report | August 2, 2013, 11:57 am
  2. Angela Merkel float­ed an idea that should sound very famil­iar with­in the con­text of the Syr­i­an refugee cri­sis but has­n’t come up much with respect to all of the oth­er nations with a large num­ber of des­per­ate flee­ing peo­ple: In order to stem the flow of Afghan refugees, Angela Merkel would like to see the cre­ation of “pro­tect­ed zone” with­in Afghanistan for would-be refugees so they don’t have to flee. Who Merkel had in mind for doing the actu­al pro­tect­ing was­n’t clear from reports, but giv­en the urgency of Europe’s refugee crises and the poten­tial for more Afghan refugees over the medi­um-term, more details about her pro­pos­al, like who would be pro­tect­ing the “pro­tect­ed zones”, are prob­a­bly just a mat­ter of time:

    Reuters
    Merkel says Afghans com­ing to Ger­many for bet­ter life will be sent back

    BERLIN | By Michelle Mar­tin
    Wed Dec 2, 2015 10:27am EST

    Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel said on Wednes­day that Afghans head­ing to Ger­many in pur­suit of bet­ter eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances will be sent back to Afghanistan and peo­ple still there should move to safe zones with­in their coun­try rather than migrat­ing to Europe.

    Hun­dreds of thou­sands of migrants, many flee­ing war and pover­ty in the Mid­dle East, have streamed into Ger­many this year, and Ger­man author­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ties are now buck­ling under the strain.

    Afghans — wide­ly viewed as unwant­ed eco­nom­ic migrants — formed the sixth largest group of asy­lum seek­ers in Europe’s eco­nom­ic pow­er­house in the first 10 months of this year.

    Speak­ing at a joint news con­fer­ence with Afghan Pres­i­dent Ashraf Ghani in Berlin, Merkel said Ger­many would meet its human­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tions for Afghans who are in seri­ous dan­ger because they worked for for­eign forces such as the Ger­man army.

    “But where refugees come hop­ing for a bet­ter life — and I know that this hope is big for many — that is no rea­son to get asy­lum sta­tus or res­i­den­cy sta­tus here,” she said, adding that in such cas­es peo­ple would be deport­ed back home.

    Merkel said the train­ing Ger­many pro­vides for police offi­cers in Afghanistan would be expand­ed to include lessons on com­bat­ing smug­glers, ille­gal immi­gra­tion and pass­port forgery.

    Almost 21,000 Afghans arrived in Ger­many between Jan­u­ary and Octo­ber — up from just under 8,000 in the same peri­od last year. Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Thomas de Maiziere has pre­vi­ous­ly said that Afghans should “stay in their coun­try”.

    To that end, Merkel talked about cre­at­ing “pro­tect­ed zones” with­in Afghanistan so that peo­ple liv­ing in unsafe areas can move with­in their coun­try to anoth­er region that offers suf­fi­cient secu­ri­ty, instead of head­ing to Europe.

    Peo­ple would need to be offered prospects such as liv­ing space and voca­tion­al train­ing in these zones, she said.

    Ghani agreed, say­ing that it was nec­es­sary to tack­le the root caus­es of migra­tion — name­ly insta­bil­i­ty and pover­ty.

    Merkel stressed there was false infor­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing in Afghanistan about migra­tion to Ger­many and said the embassy was tak­ing mea­sures to ensure peo­ple knew the rumors were not true.

    ...

    For months Ger­many has been using local media in Afghanistan and oth­er coun­tries to dis­pel the rumors that Europe’s largest econ­o­my has its doors wide open to every­one.

    “But where refugees come hop­ing for a bet­ter life — and I know that this hope is big for many — that is no rea­son to get asy­lum sta­tus or res­i­den­cy sta­tus here,” she said, adding that in such cas­es peo­ple would be deport­ed back home.

    So will the path to a bet­ter life for Afghans flee­ing the Tal­iban lead “pro­tect­ed zones” else­where in Afghanistan?:

    ...

    Almost 21,000 Afghans arrived in Ger­many between Jan­u­ary and Octo­ber — up from just under 8,000 in the same peri­od last year. Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Thomas de Maiziere has pre­vi­ous­ly said that Afghans should “stay in their coun­try”.

    To that end, Merkel talked about cre­at­ing “pro­tect­ed zones” with­in Afghanistan so that peo­ple liv­ing in unsafe areas can move with­in their coun­try to anoth­er region that offers suf­fi­cient secu­ri­ty, instead of head­ing to Europe.

    Peo­ple would need to be offered prospects such as liv­ing space and voca­tion­al train­ing in these zones, she said.

    Ghani agreed, say­ing that it was nec­es­sary to tack­le the root caus­es of migra­tion — name­ly insta­bil­i­ty and pover­ty.

    ...

    Afghan Pres­i­dent Ghani agrees with the idea, so it’s cer­tain­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty. Of course, some sort of exter­nal mil­i­tary force would be required to cre­ate and main­tain the “pro­tect­ed zones” and since a grow­ing swathe of the Afghanistan is falling under Tal­iban con­trol, those “pro­tect­ed zones” might need to be “steadi­ly expand­ing pro­tect­ed zones to pro­tect­ed a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion” before Afghanistan’s civ­il war final­ly ends. Yes, US forces and oth­er NATO forces are still in Afghanistan, but how much longer they’re there and in what num­bers remains an open ques­tion.

    So, with the “pro­tect­ed zones” idea and required mil­i­tary force in mind, it’s also worth recall­ing an idea that was float­ing back in 2009: The cre­ation of a Euro­pean army. It was an idea that found quite a bit of back­ing in some gov­ern­ments and as Italy’s for­eign min­is­ter not­ed at the time sug­gest­ed, one exam­ple of the util­i­ty of a Euro­pean army was that “we could pool our forces in Afghanistan”

    German-Foreign-Policy.com
    Poten­tial of a World Pow­er

    2009/11/17
    BERLIN/BRUSSELS

    (Own report) — Just a few days before the future lead­ing posi­tions for the EU are to be des­ig­nat­ed, Berlin is rais­ing demands for access to lead­ing posts in the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS)and the EU Com­mis­sion. As explained by the Ger­man Min­is­ter of State to the For­eign Min­istry, Wern­er Hoy­er, the EU Coun­cil Pres­i­dent and the For­eign Min­is­ter do not have to be Ger­man, but Ger­many “lays great weight” on “rel­e­vant­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing” at the admin­is­tra­tive lev­el posi­tions just below them, which are con­sid­ered deci­sive­ly influ­en­tial on Brus­sels’ poli­cies. Berlin is giv­ing the new Exter­nal Action Ser­vice a par­tic­u­lar­ly high pri­or­i­ty, since it con­sol­i­dates the EU’s exter­nal pol­i­cy and is sup­posed to pro­vide Brus­sels with new glob­al pow­er impact. Ger­man pol­i­cy advi­sors con­sid­er that the EU has the “poten­tial of a world pow­er” but point out that this poten­tial must first be estab­lished through Brus­sels’ exter­nal pol­i­cy. It was under Ger­man pres­sure that the deci­sion was made to place the EU’s mil­i­tary plan­ning and oper­a­tion staff with­in the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Exter­nal Action Ser­vice, to be able to direct­ly incor­po­rate mil­i­tary oper­a­tions into EU exter­nal pol­i­cy. In the mean­time, the Ger­man project of cre­at­ing an EU army is win­ning favor. Last week­end the Ital­ian For­eign Min­is­ter gave his accord.

    ...

    Top Posts
    As the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry’s Min­is­ter of State, Wern­er Hoy­er, explained Mon­day, Berlin is demand­ing two things in return for Ger­many’s renun­ci­a­tion on claims to the two top posts: Chan­cel­lor Merkel should have deci­sive influ­ence over the deci­sions and sec­ond­ly, Ger­many “lays great weight” on “rel­e­vant­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing” at admin­is­tra­tive lev­el posi­tions just below the coun­cil pres­i­dent and the for­eign minister.[1] These posi­tions, whose offi­cials, usu­al­ly far from the pub­lic eye, can shape the EU’s devel­op­ment, are con­sid­ered to be deci­sive­ly pow­er­ful. The gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Euro­pean Coun­cil will be among the posi­tions that will be deter­mined. It is the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who is the high­est admin­is­tra­tive head of the EU nations in Brus­sels. In the mean­time, the Ger­man chan­cel­lor has made it known that she insists for Ger­many the post of EU Com­mis­sion­er for Eco­nom­ic and Mon­e­tary Affairs — a great advan­tage for Europe’s strongest indus­tri­al nation. After all, Berlin is seek­ing the lead­ing posts in the new­ly cre­at­ed Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS), which, with­in the frame­work of EU exter­nal pol­i­cy is extreme­ly impor­tant.

    Exter­nal Action Ser­vice
    Ger­man EU func­tionar­ies and polit­i­cal advi­sors are insis­tent­ly plead­ing for giv­ing the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice spe­cial atten­tion. As Ger­hard Sabathil, the direc­tor for strat­e­gy, coor­di­na­tion and analy­sis in the EU’s Com­mis­sion’s gen­er­al direc­tion for exter­nal rela­tions, declared the EU must be more deci­sive in its han­dling of world pol­i­cy. Sabathil points to the replace­ment of the “G8” by the “G20”, which has dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the glob­al posi­tion of Europe. Where­as Europe was rep­re­sent­ed by 4 nations in G8, it has only 5 in G20. “The deci­sive ques­tion is to what extent can Europe com­pen­sate for this quan­ti­ta­tive loss of pow­er,” Sabathil is quot­ed as hav­ing said.[2] It is “absolute­ly essen­tial” that the EU’s influ­ence be rein­forced with a cohe­sive exter­nal and mil­i­tary pol­i­cy. The effec­tive­ness of the EU’s Exter­nal Action Ser­vice will not only depend on its for­eign min­is­ter but also the per­son­nel at the high­est lev­els of admin­is­tra­tion. This is the lev­el Berlin wants to have direct access to.

    Merge
    It is quite pos­si­ble to achieve sub­stan­tial glob­al polit­i­cal pow­er, accord­ing to Wern­er Wei­den­feld, one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man polit­i­cal advi­sors. Even though the EU’s glob­al involve­ment cur­rent­ly is rather rudi­men­ta­ry, Wei­den­feld writes in a recent arti­cle, “Europe has the poten­tial of a world pow­er — it has top posi­tions in glob­al com­merce, in glob­al pro­duc­tion as well as in research and edu­ca­tion.” Wei­den­fels resumes, “this poten­tial (...) only needs ade­quate organization”.[3] The set-up of the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice, due to start work in April 2010, is serv­ing this objec­tive, as well as the incor­po­ra­tion of all mil­i­tary plan­ning and oper­a­tional staff into the EEAS, that Berlin imposed against the will of Paris and London.[4] The EU’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and exter­nal pol­i­cy plan­ning will merge ren­der­ing con­sul­ta­tions between the dif­fer­ent branch­es of the bureau­cra­cy superfluous.[5]

    EU Army
    The Ger­man call for a joint Euro­pean Army (german-foreign-policy.com report­ed [6]), is gain­ing sup­port. Last week­end, the Ital­ian For­eign Min­is­ter, Fran­co Frat­ti­ni, announced that his gov­ern­ment will push for the cre­ation of a Euro­pean army, as soon as the Lis­bon Treaty comes into force on Decem­ber 1. If there were such a Euro­pean army, “we could pool our forces in Afghanistan,” Mr. Frat­ti­ni declared: “Italy could send planes, France could send tanks, Britain could send armored cars, and in this way we would opti­mize the use of our resources.”[7] Mr. Frat­ti­ni said the Lis­bon Treaty had estab­lished that if some coun­tries want to enter into van­guard coop­er­a­tion and estab­lish a com­mon defense, they can do so. Oth­er coun­tries could join lat­er. This merg­er would deprive indi­vid­ual Euro­pean nations the pos­si­bil­i­ty of defend­ing their sov­er­eign­ty. It would also sub­or­di­nate their armies to the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice in Brus­sels. And this would mean sub­or­di­na­tion under the pow­er that can cur­rent­ly call the shots: Ger­many.
    [1] Hoy­er: Deutsch­land erhebt Anspruch auf wichtige EU-Ämter; AFP 16.11.2009
    [2] Strate­gien für Europa in Zeit­en des Über­gangs; http://www.cap-lmu.de 10.11.2009
    [3] Wern­er Wei­den­feld: Mein Europa der Zukun­ft; Go Sixt Poli­tik http://www.cap-lmu.de 28.09.2009
    [4] Autonom oder ange­bun­den? Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung 23.10.2009
    [5] EU mil­i­tary chiefs ner­vous about Lis­bon Treaty impli­ca­tions; EUob­serv­er 05.11.2009
    [6] see also The Hege­mon’s Army
    [7] Italy’s For­eign Min­is­ter says post-Lis­bon EU needs a Euro­pean Army; The Sun­day Times 15.11.2009

    Those were the ambi­tions in 2009. And while those ambi­tions may not have been real­ized yet, they cer­tain­ly haven’t gone away either:

    The Tele­graph
    Merkel ‘expects Cameron to back EU army’ in exchange for rene­go­ti­a­tion
    Ger­man chan­cel­lor will ask UK to stand aside as she pro­motes ambi­tious plan to inte­grate con­ti­nen­tal Europe’s armed forces, The Tele­graph has been told

    By Peter Fos­ter and Matthew Hole­house

    9:19PM BST 12 Sep 2015

    Angela Merkel will expect David Cameron to drop his oppo­si­tion to an EU army in exchange for sup­port­ing Britain’s rene­go­ti­a­tion, the Tele­graph has been told.

    The Ger­man chan­cel­lor will ask Britain to stand aside as she pro­motes an ambi­tious blue­print to inte­grate con­ti­nen­tal Europe’s armed forces.

    It comes as Jean-Claude Junck­er, pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, said Britain will get a deal if it gives the green light to a raft of pow­er­ful new EU insti­tu­tions..

    A Berlin source said agree­ing not to “block” Mrs Merkel’s defence plans is a “favour” that she would seek from Mr Cameron as he looks for her sup­port in the rene­go­ti­a­tion.

    “If you want favours, you have to give favours,” the source said.

    “If Cameron wants a ‘flex­i­ble Europe’, he must let oth­er mem­bers inte­grate fur­ther. Yes — opt out, opt out, opt out — and then shut up.”

    While there is no expec­ta­tion or oblig­a­tion for Britain to take part in steep­er inte­gra­tion, the cre­ation of an EU army could mar­gin­alise Britain with­in Nato and result in the Unit­ed States down­grad­ing the spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Britain in favour of Paris and Berlin, experts warn.

    While Mr Cameron backs tighter Euro­zone inte­gra­tion, he faces a dilem­ma over whether the risk of a dimin­ished strate­gic posi­tion is a price worth pay­ing in his rene­go­ti­a­tion.

    The Tele­graph has seen an unpub­lished posi­tion paper drawn up by Europe and Defence pol­i­cy com­mit­tees of Mrs Merkel’s par­ty, the CDU, that sets out a detailed 10-point plan for mil­i­tary co-oper­a­tion in Europe.

    It is under­stood to close­ly reflect her think­ing, and calls for a per­ma­nent EU mil­i­tary HQ, com­bined weapons pro­cure­ment and a shared mil­i­tary doc­trine.

    The paper says it is “urgent” to inte­grate armed forces “in the face of mul­ti­fac­eted crises”.

    It calls for “a per­ma­nent struc­tured and coor­di­nat­ed coop­er­a­tion of nation­al armed forces in the medi­um term.

    “In the long run, this process should accord­ing to the present Ger­man coali­tion agree­ment lead also to a Euro­pean Army sub­ject to Par­lia­men­tar­i­an con­trol.”

    It adds: “In the frame­work of NATO, a uni­form Euro­pean pil­lar will be more valu­able and effi­cient for the USA than with the present rag-rug char­ac­terised by a lack of joint Euro­pean plan­ning, pro­cure­ment, and inter­op­er­abil­i­ty.”

    A sim­i­lar paper has been cir­cu­lat­ed by Elmar Brok, a key Merkel ally, with­in the EPP par­ty group in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. It describes the lack of an EU mil­i­tary head­quar­ters as “absurd”.

    Frances Bur­well, vice pres­i­dent of the US-based Atlantic Coun­cil think tank, said the Unit­ed States would wel­come inte­gra­tion to make waste­ful Euro­pean defence spend­ing more effi­cient.

    How­ev­er, the spe­cial rela­tion­ship could be “down­grad­ed” if Britain refused to join, in favour of the “very active” French mil­i­tary.

    “In com­bi­na­tion with the dis­cus­sion about whether Britain will leave the EU, it would con­tribute to a down­grad­ing,” she said.

    “If you did some­thing like that, the nat­ur­al lead­ers would be France and Ger­many and we’d have to spend a lot of time with them.”

    “There used to be no doubt about who we would call first — but things are now more com­pli­cat­ed.”

    Mrs Merkel is back­ing a push by Mr Junck­er to cre­ate an EU army..

    Ear­li­er this year his defence advis­er, Michel Barnier, issued a paper through the EU’s in-house think tank call­ing for per­ma­nent mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion among mem­ber states that are will­ing using legal mech­a­nisms known as PESCO cre­at­ed by the Lis­bon Treaty of 2009.

    Under the treaty, Britain could not be forced to join a joint army, but it can­not veto its cre­ation. Until now, Euro­pean lead­ers have been reluc­tant to push ahead with the plans, in part to avoid a split on defence with Britain, whose expen­di­ture on defence is only matched by France.

    The paper pro­pos­es an Oper­a­tional Head­quar­ters, a Euro­pean Med­ical Com­mand and a Joint Heli­copter Wing as first steps under a project that would save bil­lions in dupli­ca­tion between coun­tries.

    Since 2007 the EU has had two rotat­ing emer­gency bat­tle­groups of 1,500 men, but they have nev­er seen com­bat — some­thing Mr Barnier dubs a “fail­ure” that “must be addressed”.

    A com­bined mil­i­tary is nec­es­sary “in order to become a vec­tor of the EU as a glob­al actor,” and to “sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­en the Euro­pean pil­lar with­in NATO”, the paper says.

    It notes: “UK does not share an inter­est in a close­ly inte­grat­ed Euro­pean defence, where­as Ger­many and France, togeth­er with the Benelux coun­tries, Italy, Spain and more recent­ly Poland are more open to the idea.”

    It adds: “Clear­ly, secu­ri­ty in Europe is today high in demand and low in sup­ply, beg­ging the ques­tion: “If not now, when?”

    In a major address on Wednes­day, Mr Junck­er said Britain’s rene­go­ti­a­tion will “recog­nise the real­i­ty” it has spe­cial opt outs on pol­i­cy. But cru­cial­ly, he added: “To be fair to the oth­er mem­ber states, the UK’s choic­es must not pre­vent them from fur­ther inte­gra­tion where they see fit.”

    Mr Junck­er pro­posed pow­er­ful EU insti­tu­tions that Britain would not be oblig­ed to join, includ­ing a Euro­zone trea­sury, a bor­der and coast guard, a ‘green card’ sys­tem of legal immi­gra­tion and a new raft of laws reg­u­lat­ing pay and con­di­tions.

    A com­mon EU army has been a goal of Euro­pean inte­gra­tionists for six­ty years, but Britain has long been a major obsta­cle. Mr Cameron pledged to oppose “notions like an EU army” in the 2015 Con­ser­v­a­tive man­i­festo, and has repeat­ed­ly attacked the idea as Prime Min­is­ter.

    Geof­frey Van Orden, a Con­ser­v­a­tive MEP and retired British Army brigadier, said allow­ing a Euro­pean army is “too high a price to pay” for Britain’s rene­go­ti­a­tion.

    It could form a pow­er­ful cau­cus with­in Nato, and the Unit­ed States would con­clude “we no longer had any influ­ence on the con­ti­nent” and down­grade its rela­tion­ship.

    It could also result in Britain being shut out the lucra­tive defence equip­ment mar­ket in Europe, he said.

    “I have always sus­pect­ed that we were will­ing to make con­ces­sions in rela­tion to for­eign pol­i­cy in exchange for French and Ger­man sup­port in oth­er areas,” he said.

    “I don’t accept we should have to pay this price. We should not trade away some­thing so strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant for some minor con­ces­sions in terms of reform.”

    Jan Techau, direc­tor of Carnegie Europe, a pol­i­cy think tank, said defence inte­gra­tion “will prob­a­bly come up” dur­ing the rene­go­ti­a­tion talks with Ger­many.

    ...

    Might we see the set­ting up “pro­tect­ed zones” in places like Afghanistan or per­haps Syr­ia? We’ll see, but it it does hap­pen it will be a lot eas­i­er to orga­nize with an EU army that could “become a vec­tor of the EU as a glob­al actor”:

    ...
    Since 2007 the EU has had two rotat­ing emer­gency bat­tle­groups of 1,500 men, but they have nev­er seen com­bat — some­thing Mr Barnier dubs a “fail­ure” that “must be addressed”.

    A com­bined mil­i­tary is nec­es­sary “in order to become a vec­tor of the EU as a glob­al actor,” and to “sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­en the Euro­pean pil­lar with­in NATO”, the paper says.
    ...

    So top EU lead­ers like Angela Merkel and EU Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Jean-Claude Junck­er would clear­ly like see a per­ma­nent “EU army” set up soon­er or lat­er. How much of the pub­lic backs the idea remains to be seen, with the UK pub­lic split on the idea, but among the EU elites it seems like­ly that the desire to cre­ate an “EU army” which is capa­ble of the kind of force pro­jec­tion that can make the EU a “glob­al actor” in mil­i­tary affairs is prob­a­bly only going to grow the longer the EU stays togeth­er. Of course, as Europe’s chaot­ic and increas­ing­ly xeno­pho­bic response to the refugee cri­sis reminds us, while the cre­ation of an EU army seems inevitable the longer some­thing like the EU exists, the cre­ation of an EU army at some point in the future is still by no means guar­an­teed.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 8, 2015, 7:55 pm
  3. The Dai­ly Express, a British tabloid that backs the ‘Brex­it’ these days, has a piece that’s bound to ruf­fle some of the British elec­torate’s feath­ers with the Brex­it vote loom­ing: The UK’s sec­re­tary of defense announce the cre­ation of a joint expe­di­tionary force with France and called for greater mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion with Brus­sels:

    Dai­ly Express

    EU ARMY? Fal­lon calls for greater inte­gra­tion with Brus­sels in future wars
    FEARS British armed forces could be dragged into an EU army esca­lat­ed today after Michael Fal­lon said UK troops must fur­ther inte­grate with their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts.

    By Tom Batch­e­lor
    PUBLISHED: 15:00, Thu, Apr 21, 2016 | UPDATED: 17:28, Thu, Apr 21, 2016

    The Defence Sec­re­tary, speak­ing from Sal­is­bury Plain where a joint exer­cise com­pris­ing British and French forces was tak­ing place, hailed the “grow­ing part­ner­ship” of Euro­pean nations on mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.

    Mr Fal­lon said UK mil­i­tary coop­er­at­ed with their Euro­pean neigh­bours on “every front”, includ­ing British and French pilots fly­ing each oth­er’s jets and both nations’ ship sail­ing along­side one anoth­er.

    But he added: “Today we take that part­ner­ship to a new lev­el.”

    Describ­ing the new Com­bined Joint Expe­di­tionary Force (CJEF), a 5,000-strong rapid deploy­ment Anglo-French force designed to respond to human­i­tar­i­an crises as well as con­ven­tion­al con­flicts, he said a “new chap­ter” had opened that would take coop­er­a­tion between the two nations “to greater heights”.

    The Defence Sec­re­tary said: “This is no paper tiger, this is a force that from now on has the teeth, the means, the speed and the agili­ty to act.”

    Mr Fal­lon added that it was now unlike­ly that Britain would “ever go into con­flict on its own again”.

    How­ev­er, he lat­er sought to clar­i­fy his com­ments, telling Express.co.uk Britain was not about to form an EU army but instead want­ed sim­ply to work more close­ly with its allies.

    Speak­ing along­side him, Mr Fal­lon’s French coun­ter­part Jean-Yves Le Dri­an said the joint exer­cise was just the “start” of mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion across the con­ti­nent.

    But the notion of a pan-Euro­pean army has pro­voked out­rage from crit­ics on both sides of the Brex­it debate.

    For­mer defence sec­re­tary Sir Mal­colm Rifkind, who is cam­paign­ing to remain in the EU, rub­bished the idea of an inte­grat­ed fight­ing force con­trolled by Brus­sels, telling the Express.co.uk mil­i­tray maters were “not a respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Euro­pean Union”.

    And Ukip’s defence spokesman Mike Hookem called for Mr Fal­lon to resign over his appar­ent sup­port of fur­ther inte­gra­tion with Brus­sels, say­ing it was time for the Tory min­is­ter to “step aside”.

    The MEP said: “Fal­lon and his pro-EU cohorts in the Min­istry of Defence, the same peo­ple who are deny­ing troops the right to cam­paign in the ref­er­en­dum, deny an EU Army is being devel­oped.

    “The British pub­lic hold our Armed Forces in high esteem and will not stand by as they see them hand­ed over to a for­eign pow­er who does not have the inter­est and safe­ty of the British pub­lic at heart.”

    ...

    “Describ­ing the new Com­bined Joint Expe­di­tionary Force (CJEF), a 5,000-strong rapid deploy­ment Anglo-French force designed to respond to human­i­tar­i­an crises as well as con­ven­tion­al con­flicts, he said a “new chap­ter” had opened that would take coop­er­a­tion between the two nations “to greater heights”.”
    Well, ok, mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion between the UK and France seems pret­ty non-con­tro­ver­sial. At least in the past it might have been. But note the clar­i­fi­ca­tion the UK’s defense sec­re­tary deemed nec­es­sary: No, this isn’t a step towards an EU army:

    ...

    How­ev­er, he lat­er sought to clar­i­fy his com­ments, telling Express.co.uk Britain was not about to form an EU army but instead want­ed sim­ply to work more close­ly with its allies.

    Speak­ing along­side him, Mr Fal­lon’s French coun­ter­part Jean-Yves Le Dri­an said the joint exer­cise was just the “start” of mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion across the con­ti­nent.

    But the notion of a pan-Euro­pean army has pro­voked out­rage from crit­ics on both sides of the Brex­it debate.

    For­mer defence sec­re­tary Sir Mal­colm Rifkind, who is cam­paign­ing to remain in the EU, rub­bished the idea of an inte­grat­ed fight­ing force con­trolled by Brus­sels, telling the Express.co.uk mil­i­tray maters were “not a respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Euro­pean Union”.

    ...

    That’s got to be a bit awk­ward: no, accord­ing to Fal­lon, this has noth­ing to do with cre­at­ing a joint EU army. It’s mere­ly what France’s sec­re­tary of defense said it was...the “start” of mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion across the con­ti­nent.

    It’s a fine line that’s only going to be more and more dif­fi­cult to walk at the EU con­tin­ues to inte­grate because, at some point, a giant, increas­ing­ly inte­grate union like the EU that mem­ber states con­tin­ue to pool greater amounts of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty into does call for some sort of mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion even­tu­al­ly. At least if the EU even­tu­al­ly becomes a “Unit­ed States of Europe” and not the wierd qua­si-nation-state/free-trade zone it cur­rent is today. But there’s quite a bit more inte­gra­tion that’s going to be nec­es­sary before the EU reach­es that “Unit­ed States of Europe” sta­tus and it’s very unclear which nations will still be a part of the EU at that point. In oth­er words, the ques­tion of whether an EU army makes sense now or soon vs even­tu­al­ly are two relate, but still very dif­fer­ent ques­tions.

    So if the UK isn’t sure it’s going to still be in the EU next year, let alone decades from now, how should mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion with the UK’s neigh­bors be han­dled? Whether or not the UK stays in the EU, it’s neigh­bor­hood isn’t chang­ing and it’s unlike­ly the UK will be in a state of war with the rest of Europe any time soon. That’s part of what makes mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion for the UK such a slip­pery slope. Because it’s a slip­pery slope that any Euro­pean nation does need to walk to some extent. And some­times the slip­pery slope is the only rea­son­able path to go down...you just need to make sure you nev­er reach the bot­tom. Or, in the case of the EU army, you need to make sure you don’t reach that bot­tom unless you’re real­ly real­ly sure that’s where you want to go because climb­ing back up that slope won’t be easy.

    So don’t be sur­prised if ques­tions about the risks of mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion become more point­ed as the ‘Brex­it’ vote approach­es. And don’t be sur­prised if those ques­tions about the UK’s mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion plans revolve around ques­tions about oth­er EU mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion plans:

    Dai­ly Express

    SECRET PLOT EXPOSED: EU in stealth plan to set up ARMY by merg­ing Ger­man and Dutch forces
    AN EU armed forces is being set up “by stealth” with the merg­er of the Ger­man and Dutch armies and navies, it has emerged.

    By David Mad­dox
    PUBLISHED: 03:37, Wed, Apr 20, 2016 | UPDATED: 07:17, Wed, Apr 20, 2016

    The plan is for the two coun­tries to cre­ate a nucle­us of an EU armed forces to ful­fil the long term goal spelt out by Ger­man defence min­is­ter last year of hav­ing an EU army.

    Ukip defence spokesman Mike Hookem is to ask the Com­mis­sion what role it has played in talks to bring the new German/ Dutch force togeth­er as a nucle­us for an EU mil­i­tary.

    He point­ed out that the devel­op­ments are part of the cen­tral­i­sa­tion by stealth going on in the EU which Britain will be dragged into if it votes to remain in the EU.

    He warned that the move is aimed at begin­ning a merg­er with­out going through the coun­cil of min­is­ters and oth­er EU bod­ies and then cre­at­ing an EU mil­i­tary by stealth by adding oth­er coun­tries.

    And it has also emerged that the Czech Repub­lic has also start­ed talks to have its army become part of the Germany’s army.

    Last month the Dutch 43rd Mech­a­nised Brigade came under Ger­man com­mand as part of its Ger­man 1st Armoured Divi­sion.

    This fol­lowed the Dutch 11th Air­mo­bile Brigade com­ing under Ger­man com­mand in 2015

    As things stand the Dutch Army has been reduced to its 13th Mech­a­nised Brigade along with spe­cial forces, sup­port and head­quar­ters staff but there are plans to merge these with the Ger­man Army too.

    In addi­tion the sea bat­tal­ion of the Ger­man Navy will be grad­u­al­ly into the Roy­al Dutch Navy by 2018 and the two coun­tries are shar­ing Holland’s largest ship, the Karel Door­man.

    The accel­er­a­tion of the merg­er of the Ger­man and Dutch mil­i­tary fol­lows talks last year when the Ger­man Defence Min­is­ter Ursu­la von der Leye declared that the long term aim is to cre­ate an EU army.

    She said: “The Euro­pean Army is our long-term goal, but first we have to strength­en the Euro­pean Defence Union.’

    She added: “To achieve this, some nations with con­crete mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion must come to the fore — and the Ger­mans and the Dutch are doing this.”

    Mr Hookem MEP said that the the Ger­mans and Dutch are “cre­at­ing an EU army by stealth”.

    He went on: “The EU was sup­posed to be about cor­ralling Ger­many mil­i­tary dom­i­nance in Europe.

    ...

    “And it has also emerged that the Czech Repub­lic has also start­ed talks to have its army become part of the Germany’s army.”
    Yep, and those reports are on top of the inte­gra­tion of Ger­man and Ditch forces into each oth­er’s com­mand struc­tures. So we already have EU nations not just cre­at­ing struc­tures for close mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion like the UK and France just announce but the actu­al fusion of parts of their mil­i­taries. That may not be an EU army, but if this ends up being a trend a de fac­to EU army could emerge soon­er than one might expect. And if that hap­pens, we should prob­a­bly expect an offi­cial EU army to fol­low short­ly after­wards. Espe­cial­ly since the cre­ation of such an enti­ty was one of the demands Angela Merkel made to David Cameron when she agreed to the UK’s EU treaty rene­go­ti­a­tions last year:

    The Tele­graph

    Merkel ‘expects Cameron to back EU army’ in exchange for rene­go­ti­a­tion
    Ger­man chan­cel­lor will ask UK to stand aside as she pro­motes ambi­tious plan to inte­grate con­ti­nen­tal Europe’s armed forces, The Tele­graph has been told

    By Peter Fos­ter and Matthew Hole­house

    9:19PM BST 12 Sep 2015

    Angela Merkel will expect David Cameron to drop his oppo­si­tion to an EU army in exchange for sup­port­ing Britain’s rene­go­ti­a­tion, the Tele­graph has been told.

    The Ger­man chan­cel­lor will ask Britain to stand aside as she pro­motes an ambi­tious blue­print to inte­grate con­ti­nen­tal Europe’s armed forces.

    It comes as Jean-Claude Junck­er, pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, said Britain will get a deal if it gives the green light to a raft of pow­er­ful new EU insti­tu­tions.

    A Berlin source said agree­ing not to “block” Mrs Merkel’s defence plans is a “favour” that she would seek from Mr Cameron as he looks for her sup­port in the rene­go­ti­a­tion.

    “If you want favours, you have to give favours,” the source said.

    “If Cameron wants a ‘flex­i­ble Europe’, he must let oth­er mem­bers inte­grate fur­ther. Yes — opt out, opt out, opt out — and then shut up.”

    While there is no expec­ta­tion or oblig­a­tion for Britain to take part in steep­er inte­gra­tion, the cre­ation of an EU army could mar­gin­alise Britain with­in Nato and result in the Unit­ed States down­grad­ing the spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Britain in favour of Paris and Berlin, experts warn.

    While Mr Cameron backs tighter Euro­zone inte­gra­tion, he faces a dilem­ma over whether the risk of a dimin­ished strate­gic posi­tion is a price worth pay­ing in his rene­go­ti­a­tion.

    The Tele­graph has seen an unpub­lished posi­tion paper drawn up by Europe and Defence pol­i­cy com­mit­tees of Mrs Merkel’s par­ty, the CDU, that sets out a detailed 10-point plan for mil­i­tary co-oper­a­tion in Europe.

    It is under­stood to close­ly reflect her think­ing, and calls for a per­ma­nent EU mil­i­tary HQ, com­bined weapons pro­cure­ment and a shared mil­i­tary doc­trine.

    The paper says it is “urgent” to inte­grate armed forces “in the face of mul­ti­fac­eted crises”.

    It calls for “a per­ma­nent struc­tured and coor­di­nat­ed coop­er­a­tion of nation­al armed forces in the medi­um term.

    “In the long run, this process should accord­ing to the present Ger­man coali­tion agree­ment lead also to a Euro­pean Army sub­ject to Par­lia­men­tar­i­an con­trol.”

    It adds: “In the frame­work of NATO, a uni­form Euro­pean pil­lar will be more valu­able and effi­cient for the USA than with the present rag-rug char­ac­terised by a lack of joint Euro­pean plan­ning, pro­cure­ment, and inter­op­er­abil­i­ty.”

    A sim­i­lar paper has been cir­cu­lat­ed by Elmar Brok, a key Merkel ally, with­in the EPP par­ty group in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. It describes the lack of an EU mil­i­tary head­quar­ters as “absurd”.

    Frances Bur­well, vice pres­i­dent of the US-based Atlantic Coun­cil think tank, said the Unit­ed States would wel­come inte­gra­tion to make waste­ful Euro­pean defence spend­ing more effi­cient.

    How­ev­er, the spe­cial rela­tion­ship could be “down­grad­ed” if Britain refused to join, in favour of the “very active” French mil­i­tary.

    “In com­bi­na­tion with the dis­cus­sion about whether Britain will leave the EU, it would con­tribute to a down­grad­ing,” she said.

    “If you did some­thing like that, the nat­ur­al lead­ers would be France and Ger­many and we’d have to spend a lot of time with them.”

    “There used to be no doubt about who we would call first — but things are now more com­pli­cat­ed.”

    Mrs Merkel is back­ing a push by Mr Junck­er to cre­ate an EU army.

    Ear­li­er this year his defence advis­er, Michel Barnier, issued a paper through the EU’s in-house think tank call­ing for per­ma­nent mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion among mem­ber states that are will­ing using legal mech­a­nisms known as PESCO cre­at­ed by the Lis­bon Treaty of 2009.

    Under the treaty, Britain could not be forced to join a joint army, but it can­not veto its cre­ation. Until now, Euro­pean lead­ers have been reluc­tant to push ahead with the plans, in part to avoid a split on defence with Britain, whose expen­di­ture on defence is only matched by France.

    The paper pro­pos­es an Oper­a­tional Head­quar­ters, a Euro­pean Med­ical Com­mand and a Joint Heli­copter Wing as first steps under a project that would save bil­lions in dupli­ca­tion between coun­tries.

    Since 2007 the EU has had two rotat­ing emer­gency bat­tle­groups of 1,500 men, but they have nev­er seen com­bat — some­thing Mr Barnier dubs a “fail­ure” that “must be addressed”.

    A com­bined mil­i­tary is nec­es­sary “in order to become a vec­tor of the EU as a glob­al actor,” and to “sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­en the Euro­pean pil­lar with­in NATO”, the paper says.

    It notes: “UK does not share an inter­est in a close­ly inte­grat­ed Euro­pean defence, where­as Ger­many and France, togeth­er with the Benelux coun­tries, Italy, Spain and more recent­ly Poland are more open to the idea.”

    It adds: “Clear­ly, secu­ri­ty in Europe is today high in demand and low in sup­ply, beg­ging the ques­tion: “If not now, when?”

    In a major address on Wednes­day, Mr Junck­er said Britain’s rene­go­ti­a­tion will “recog­nise the real­i­ty” it has spe­cial opt outs on pol­i­cy. But cru­cial­ly, he added: “To be fair to the oth­er mem­ber states, the UK’s choic­es must not pre­vent them from fur­ther inte­gra­tion where they see fit.”

    Mr Junck­er pro­posed pow­er­ful EU insti­tu­tions that Britain would not be oblig­ed to join, includ­ing a Euro­zone trea­sury, a bor­der and coast guard, a ‘green card’ sys­tem of legal immi­gra­tion and a new raft of laws reg­u­lat­ing pay and con­di­tions.

    A com­mon EU army has been a goal of Euro­pean inte­gra­tionists for six­ty years, but Britain has long been a major obsta­cle. Mr Cameron pledged to oppose “notions like an EU army” in the 2015 Con­ser­v­a­tive man­i­festo, and has repeat­ed­ly attacked the idea as Prime Min­is­ter.

    Geof­frey Van Orden, a Con­ser­v­a­tive MEP and retired British Army brigadier, said allow­ing a Euro­pean army is “too high a price to pay” for Britain’s rene­go­ti­a­tion.

    It could form a pow­er­ful cau­cus with­in Nato, and the Unit­ed States would con­clude “we no longer had any influ­ence on the con­ti­nent” and down­grade its rela­tion­ship.

    It could also result in Britain being shut out the lucra­tive defence equip­ment mar­ket in Europe, he said.

    “I have always sus­pect­ed that we were will­ing to make con­ces­sions in rela­tion to for­eign pol­i­cy in exchange for French and Ger­man sup­port in oth­er areas,” he said.

    “I don’t accept we should have to pay this price. We should not trade away some­thing so strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant for some minor con­ces­sions in terms of reform.”

    ...

    “While there is no expec­ta­tion or oblig­a­tion for Britain to take part in steep­er inte­gra­tion, the cre­ation of an EU army could mar­gin­alise Britain with­in Nato and result in the Unit­ed States down­grad­ing the spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Britain in favour of Paris and Berlin, experts warn.”
    That’s quite a damned if you do, damned if you don’t sit­u­a­tion: if the UK joins the planned EU army, it risks los­ing con­trol of its mil­i­tary to an EU par­lia­ment dom­i­nat­ed by Berlin. But if it does­n’t join the EU army, the UK risks becom­ing a side­lined NATO mem­ber and an effec­tive down­grade in its rela­tion­ship with the US. So one big pos­si­ble incen­tive for the UK to stay in the EU would be to con­tin­ue block­ing the cre­ation of an EU army, except David Cameron prob­a­bly dropped the UK’s right to block it’s cre­ation in exchange for the treaty rene­go­ti­a­tions. Plus, Ger­many is going ahead and cre­at­ing a de fac­to EU army any­ways.

    So the UK’s two choic­es for mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion are either the slip­pery slope lead­ing to an EU army or the road to reduced rel­e­vance and clout as the UK gets mil­i­tar­i­ly left behind. Unless, of course, the EU even­tu­al­ly implodes, in which case keep­ing con­trol of your own mil­i­tary would be seen as the clear­ly supe­ri­or choice, which high­lights the fact that the debates over the UK’s mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion or ‘Brex­it’ aren’t sim­ply ques­tions of whether or not the EU is the right fit for the UK. They’re ques­tions about long-term bet on the via­bil­i­ty of the Euro­pean Project in gen­er­al, with or with­out the UK. You def­i­nite­ly don’t want to give your mil­i­tary to an insti­tu­tion you don’t expect to sur­vive.

    To slip down the slope or not slip down the slope? That is the ques­tion, and it’s only going to be asked more loud­ly as the June ‘Brex­it’ vote approach­es. Watch your step!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 21, 2016, 1:51 pm
  4. Wolf­gang Mun­chau has to advise for the UK if it wants to hold both its coun­try and econ­o­my togeth­er in the post-Brex­it envi­ron­ment: Take the ‘Nor­way option’, which is char­ac­ter­ized as being in the EU, but with­out a vote. And that may indeed be the path the UK choos­es, but as the Mun­chau also points out, if the UK choos­es the ‘Nor­way option’, it’s going to be choos­ing to accept the EU’s free move­ment of labor laws that helped fuel the entire Brex­it sen­ti­ment in the first place:

    Finan­cial Times

    Brex­it: The Nor­way option is the best avail­able for the UK

    Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area mem­ber­ship is the least eco­nom­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing course for the UK to take

    Wolf­gang Mün­chau
    June 28, 2016 1:18 pm

    The sit­u­a­tion in Britain is messy but the way for­ward is not. There are, in fact, few alter­na­tives to choose from. The most sen­si­ble one is mem­ber­ship of the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area, oth­er­wise known as the Nor­way option. This gives coun­tries full access to the sin­gle Euro­pean mar­ket, albeit with no say in EU pol­i­tics.

    It is the best that for­mer Remain sup­port­ers can hope for. Many of them are back­ing the idea of anoth­er ref­er­en­dum. I can think of no sin­gle mea­sure that would pro­duce more acri­mo­ny, divi­sion and eco­nom­ic dam­age than a deci­sion to ignore a demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The Remain­ers are still trapped in the sec­ond of the five stages of mourn­ing: the anger phase. The first stage is denial, which is where they were dur­ing the cam­paign: they were in denial of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the oth­er side might win; and of the polit­i­cal dis­as­ter of the Project Fear cam­paign.

    The Nor­way option is also the most real­is­tic polit­i­cal path for the mod­er­ates among the for­mer Leave cam­paign­ers. It is the only one they may be able to deliv­er with­out destroy­ing their divid­ed par­ties.

    The EEA has a large num­ber of tech­ni­cal advan­tages. The first is that it exists. It does not need to be invent­ed. There are draft treaties. The EU can­not real­ly deny Britain this option; it would be a hos­tile act if they did.

    It would be the least dam­ag­ing to the British econ­o­my and would best min­imise the tran­si­tion­al costs of Brex­it. No British com­pa­ny would have to leave Europe. No City firm would have to trans­fer employ­ees to Dublin or Paris. The City of Lon­don would keep its EU pass­port, the abil­i­ty to do busi­ness through­out the Union from Lon­don. The Nor­way option is the eco­nom­i­cal­ly most benign of all. It is eco­nom­i­cal­ly almost neu­tral.

    It would also reduce Scotland’s appetite for anoth­er inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum. That desire could be reduced if the EU made it clear to Scot­land, as I expect it will, that if it were inde­pen­dent it would have to apply for mem­ber­ship under Arti­cle 49 of the Lis­bon Treaty. This means it would not inher­it any of Britain’s opt-outs. In par­tic­u­lar, Scot­land would be expect­ed to join the euro­zone.

    The Nor­way option also has draw­backs. It would com­pro­mise sev­er­al key mes­sages of the Leave cam­paign. It would not allow Britain to cur­tail free move­ment of labour from the EU. The UK would still pay into the EU bud­get. That myth­i­cal £350m a week would not be avail­able to spend on the NHS..

    If a new prime min­is­ter want­ed to keep those cam­paign promis­es, he or she would need to nego­ti­ate a bilat­er­al trade agree­ment instead of join­ing the EEA. There would be no sin­gle pass­port for the City. The eco­nom­ic impact would be greater. But it is the solu­tion if the pri­or­i­ty is to get out of the EU and throw away the key that would unlock a poten­tial future return.

    ...

    For any of this to work, speed mat­ters. I am relieved to hear that the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty is bring­ing for­ward its lead­er­ship elec­tion to ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. The new gov­ern­ment should then trig­ger the exit pro­ce­dure under Arti­cle 50 as soon as pos­si­ble. If elec­tions were held, there would have to be a fur­ther small delay. But it would be in Britain’s inter­est not to draw out the process unnec­es­sar­i­ly. The longer the uncer­tain­ty lasts, the big­ger the eco­nom­ic impact.

    Also, think for a moment about the effect on oth­er mem­ber states. Brex­it has dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a vic­to­ry for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Nation­al Front, in France’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion next year. If she wins, there would not be much of an EU remain­ing to leave any more.

    A time-lim­it­ed but speed­i­ly agreed Nor­way option would respect the will of the vot­ers, the polit­i­cal real­i­ty in the UK and in the EU, prove eco­nom­i­cal­ly least cost­ly and it is flex­i­ble. It is not the best of all worlds by any means. Before the ref­er­en­dum, there was a broad con­sen­sus that there is real­ly not much point in leav­ing the EU in order to join the EEA. But if you have buy­ers’ remorse now, or if you are seek­ing a tran­si­tion­al arrange­ment to a new regime, this is the best choice there is.

    “The Nor­way option also has draw­backs. It would com­pro­mise sev­er­al key mes­sages of the Leave cam­paign. It would not allow Britain to cur­tail free move­ment of labour from the EU. The UK would still pay into the EU bud­get. That myth­i­cal £350m a week would not be avail­able to spend on the NHS..”

    That’s prob­a­bly going to be one of the biggest stick­ing points on any pos­si­ble path for­ward: the eco­nom­i­cal­ly smoothest path for­ward, the ‘Nor­way option’, is also a path that would negate the ‘Leave’ cam­paign’s promise to end the free move­ment of labor from the EU. Either that or the UK needs to rene­go­ti­ate an entire­ly new trade agree­ment with the EU that does­n’t allow free move­ment of labor and some­one allows the City to retain full EU access. It’s a tricky sit­u­a­tion and one where the EU appears to be hold­ing almost all the cards.

    Even more omi­nous for the UK’s nego­ti­a­tions could be the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the EU’s remain­ing bank­ing indus­try and finance giants like Ger­many and France would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mind see­ing the UK not even get a ‘Nor­way option’ since that could end up dri­ving a huge amount of the City’s bank­ing busi­ness back onto the con­ti­nent. That’s not chump change and a top ECB offi­cial has already said that there’s no pos­si­bil­i­ty of the UK’s bank retain­ing their ‘pass­ports’ to the EU if the UK leaves the EU sin­gle mar­ket.

    And while the ‘Nor­way option’ is now being viewed as basi­cal­ly the only way for­ward for the UK from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, it’s unclear how the UK pub­lic is going accept that path for­ward when oppo­si­tion to the free move­ment of labor was one of the pri­ma­ry social forces lead­ing to this his­toric elec­tion result. At the same time, it’s hard to imag­ine the EU allow­ing the UK to nego­ti­at­ing a ‘UK option’ that allows for free trade and the City’s full access to the con­ti­nent with­out the free move­ment labor. Because if the UK got a deal like that, you can be pret­ty sure there’s going to be a lot more EU ‘exits’ in the future, prob­a­bly start­ing with France.

    So it’s clear­ly time for some ‘out­side the box’ think­ing with­in the UK. Who knows, if the whole process drags on long enough it’s not impos­si­ble that the rest of the EU could dis­solve in the mean time. That would cer­tain­ly reframe the nature of the nego­ti­a­tions. But assum­ing the UK isn’t inter­est­ed in enor­mous risks the come with drag­ging this process out, and assum­ing vot­ers will refuse a new treaty with the free move­ment of labor, there aren’t a lot of oth­er options. But there are a few oth­er options:

    BBC News

    Five mod­els for post-Brex­it UK trade

    After the UK vot­ed to leave the EU, the coun­try faces the prospect of hav­ing to estab­lish new trade rela­tion­ships — both with the remain­ing 27 EU mem­bers and oth­er coun­tries around the world.

    27 June 2016

    As a mem­ber of the EU, the UK has been includ­ed in trade deals the EU has nego­ti­at­ed. There are 22 trade agree­ments between the EU and indi­vid­ual coun­tries, and five mul­ti-lat­er­al agree­ments cov­er­ing mul­ti­ple coun­tries.

    This means that if the UK wants to retain pref­er­en­tial access to the mar­kets of the 52 coun­tries cov­ered by these agree­ments, it would have to rene­go­ti­ate trade deals with all of them.

    Britain is a large mar­ket, so there is a clear incen­tive for oth­er coun­tries to nego­ti­ate a deal. Advo­cates of Brex­it argued that it would be in nobody’s inter­est to inter­rupt the cur­rent trad­ing part­ner­ships.

    But which of the oth­er mod­els dis­cussed as poten­tial post-Brex­it options for the UK are real­is­tic?

    1. The Nor­way mod­el

    * Mem­ber of Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area, full access to sin­gle mar­ket, oblig­ed to make a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion and accept major­i­ty of EU laws, free move­ment applies as it does in the EU

    Nor­way is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area (EEA) — the sin­gle mar­ket — along with the 28 cur­rent EU mem­bers, Liecht­en­stein and Ice­land.

    In return for that access to the sin­gle mar­ket, it pays a con­tri­bu­tion to the EU bud­get and has to sign up to all the rules of the club — includ­ing its com­mon reg­u­la­tions and stan­dards.

    Peo­ple from across the EU are free to live and work in Nor­way too, but the coun­try is exempt from EU rules on agri­cul­ture, fish­eries, jus­tice and home affairs. The down­side for Nor­way is that it has no say over how the rules of the sin­gle mar­ket are cre­at­ed.

    Senior Leave cam­paign­er and Tory lead­er­ship hope­ful Boris John­son wrote in the Tele­graph on Sun­day that the UK would con­tin­ue to have access to the sin­gle mar­ket.

    But would this be pos­si­ble while also reduc­ing immi­gra­tion and cut­ting costs, as many Leave cam­paign­ers want?

    Ire­land’s Finance Min­is­ter Michael Noo­nan has said the UK is unlike­ly to secure full access to the sin­gle mar­ket unless it con­tin­ues to allow free move­ment of labour.

    And a senior Ger­man MP and ally of Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, Michael Fuchs, told the BBC that it would be pos­si­ble for Britain to main­tain access but at a price.

    “The per capi­ta fee of Nor­way is exact­ly the same as what Britain is now pay­ing into the EU,” he said. “So there won’t be any sav­ings.”

    2. The Switzer­land mod­el

    * Mem­ber of the Euro­pean Free Trade Asso­ci­a­tion but not the EEA, access to EU mar­ket gov­erned by series of bilat­er­al agree­ments, cov­ers some but not all areas of trade, also makes a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion but small­er than Nor­way’s, does­n’t have a gen­er­al duty to apply EU laws but does have to imple­ment some EU reg­u­la­tions to enable trade, free move­ment applies

    Switzer­land has a free trade agree­ment with the EU and a num­ber of agree­ments which give it access to the sin­gle mar­ket for most of its indus­tries.

    But it does not have full access to the sin­gle mar­ket for its bank­ing sec­tor and oth­er parts of the ser­vices sec­tor, which togeth­er make up almost 80% of the UK econ­o­my.

    Its agree­ment also requires the free move­ment of peo­ple.

    The Swiss vot­ed against join­ing the EEA in Decem­ber 1992.

    Instead, the coun­try, which sells over 50% of its exports to the EU, has agreed more than 120 bilat­er­al agree­ments with Brus­sels, designed to secure Swiss access to Europe’s mar­kets.

    Switzer­land con­tributes bil­lions of dol­lars to EU projects. Its bilat­er­al deals are now in dan­ger of unrav­el­ling over the ques­tion of free move­ment of peo­ple, after a ref­er­en­dum two years ago went in favour of restrict­ing the num­ber of work­ers arriv­ing from the EU.

    While no such restric­tion has yet been imple­ment­ed, Brus­sels retal­i­at­ed swift­ly, stalling agree­ments and freez­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in edu­ca­tion projects.

    3. The Turkey mod­el

    * Cus­toms union with the EU, mean­ing no tar­iffs or quo­tas on indus­tri­al goods export­ed to EU coun­tries, has to apply EU’s exter­nal tar­iff on goods import­ed from out­side the EU

    Turkey is not part of the EEA or the Euro­pean Free Trade Asso­ci­a­tion but does — like tiny Andor­ra and San Mari­no — have a cus­toms union with the EU.

    This means it faces no tar­iffs (tax­es or duties on imports and exports) or quo­tas on indus­tri­al goods it sends to EU coun­tries.

    The cus­toms union does not apply to agri­cul­tur­al goods, or ser­vices.

    Turkey also has no say on the tar­iffs it has to impose on goods it imports from non-EU coun­tries, as it has to apply the EU’s com­mon exter­nal tar­iff to those goods (and is not involved in set­ting it).

    4. The Cana­da option

    * Ceta free trade deal with the EU has yet to come into force, gets rid of most tar­iffs on goods, but excludes some food items and ser­vices, and stip­u­lates need to prove where goods are made

    The Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nom­ic and Trade Agree­ment (Ceta) between the EU and Cana­da is not yet in force, although it has been in the mak­ing for sev­en years.

    It gives Cana­da pref­er­en­tial access to the EU sin­gle mar­ket with­out all the oblig­a­tions that Nor­way and Switzer­land face, elim­i­nat­ing most trade tar­iffs. How­ev­er, some “sen­si­tive” food items, includ­ing eggs and chick­en, are not cov­ered by it.

    Cana­di­an exporters will have to prove that their goods are entire­ly “made in Cana­da”, which impos­es extra costs, to pre­vent imports enter­ing the EU through a “back door”.

    The ser­vices sec­tor is only par­tial­ly cov­ered by Ceta.

    Cru­cial­ly, a Ceta-type deal would not give UK finan­cial ser­vices the EU mar­ket access that they have now. It would be hard for Lon­don-based banks to get “pass­port­ing” rights for their ser­vices in the EU — rights that they val­ue huge­ly now.

    It would also mean that firms that export to the EU would have to com­ply with EU prod­uct stan­dards and tech­ni­cal require­ments with­out hav­ing any say in set­ting them.

    And crit­ics of such a plan point out that the UK has a com­plex web of ties to the EU — much more than Cana­da.

    5. The Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong approach

    * City states do not impose import or export tar­iffs at all — a uni­lat­er­al free trade approach

    Some advo­cates of Brex­it have said the UK should adopt a uni­lat­er­al free trade pol­i­cy — drop­ping all tar­iffs and rely­ing on the World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion’s frame­work — as report­ed by the Finan­cial Times.

    For exam­ple Hong Kong’s free trade pol­i­cy means the Chi­nese spe­cial admin­is­tra­tive region main­tains no bar­ri­ers on trade. The Hong Kong gov­ern­ment says it “does not charge tar­iff on impor­ta­tion or expor­ta­tion of goods. Import and export licens­ing is also kept to a min­i­mum.”

    This approach may have some appeal to Brex­i­teers whose ide­ol­o­gy favours no trade restric­tions.

    It would be like­ly to gath­er less sup­port from dis­af­fect­ed Labour vot­ers and left-wing crit­ics of the EU.

    No tar­iffs of any kind could have a strong­ly neg­a­tive effect on the UK’s agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors, as import­ing goods such as food and steel would in many cas­es be cheap­er than pro­duc­ing them in the UK.

    The default: World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion rules

    * WTO sets rules for inter­na­tion­al trade that apply to all mem­bers, no free move­ment or finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion, no oblig­a­tion to apply EU laws although trad­ed goods would still have to meet EU stan­dards, some tar­iffs would be in place on trade with the EU, trade in ser­vices would be restrict­ed

    If talks — with the EU and oth­ers — do not reach a deal before Brex­it takes effect, trade rules would default to World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion (WTO) rules.

    The UK and EU would be oblig­ed to apply to each oth­er the tar­iffs and oth­er trade restric­tions they apply to the rest of the world.

    ...

    “If talks — with the EU and oth­ers — do not reach a deal before Brex­it takes effect, trade rules would default to World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion (WTO) rules.”

    That’s the default option: do noth­ing and allow WTO rules to kick in. And while that seems like an unlike­ly option, when you con­sid­er all the deal-break­ers with all the oth­er options list­ed above it’s hard to rule out the ‘WTO option’, at least tem­porar­i­ly should talks get extend­ed and then break down. And all of the oth­er options oth­er than the ‘Nor­way mod­el’ would crip­ple the City’s access to the EU finan­cial ser­vices mar­kets which makes it unclear how they would be viable. So it’s look­ing increas­ing­ly like either the UK pop­u­lace is going to have to get used to more EU immi­gra­tion or its going to have to get used to being a nation with a much less influ­en­tial finan­cial sec­tor.

    Also keep in mind that the longer it takes for the UK to work some­thing out with the EU, the longer it’s like­ly to take the US to work some­thing out with the UK too. And if the UK and EU can’t find a com­mon path for­ward and the UK finds itself with a dwarfed finan­cial sec­tor and ail­ing econ­o­my, that’s prob­a­bly going to impact the terms of a US/UK trade deal and not in ways that help the UK.

    At the same time, the poten­tial com­pli­ca­tions the UK/EU nego­ti­a­tions could have on a US/UK deal high­light some­thing the UK might want to keep in mind if the EU nego­ti­a­tions go awry the UK finds itself increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed from the rest of Europe: while geog­ra­phy sug­gest that the UK would only real­ly going to be poten­tial­ly inter­est­ed in close trade rela­tions with the EU, it’s not like this is real­ly true any­more with mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trans­porta­tion. And there’s no rule that the EU is the only large inter­nal free-trade mar­ket the UK can cud­dle up to to find some secu­ri­ty in a world that increas­ing­ly inhos­pitable to nations going it solo. So while Pres­i­dent Oba­ma indi­cat­ed that a US/UK trade deal would have to come after the US/EU TTIP, there’s no rea­son that can’t change (and there are already indi­ca­tions it has), espe­cial­ly if the ideas on the table went far beyond trade. So, seri­ous or not, how about the UK and US start talk­ing about mak­ing the UK the 51st state! LOL, would­n’t that be a great post-Brex­it debate!

    And, yes, it would all be in jest. At at least first. But let’s say the UK and US did at least start play­ing foot­sie with each oth­er along these lines. How would that alter the UK’s nego­ti­at­ing posi­tion with the EU? After all, if the EU total­ly screwed the UK and the coun­try eco­nom­i­cal­ly implod­ed, it’s not impos­si­ble we could one day see the US become transat­lantic. Sure, the UK as the 51st state isn’t more than a remote pos­si­bil­i­ty at this point, but just imag­ine how just the remote pos­si­bil­i­ty of that sce­nario would freak out the EU’s pow­ers and at least give them pause about mak­ing an exam­ple out of Britain. There aren’t a lot of sce­nar­ios one can imag­ine that would push the UK pub­lic towards even pon­der­ing join­ing the US, but get­ting iso­lat­ed and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dev­as­tat­ed by EU would be one of those sce­nar­ios. Espe­cial­ly if it looked like the only option out of the mess was to come crawl­ing back to the EU and accept­ing what­ev­er con­di­tions they demands. The 51st state would­n’t have to wor­ry about such demands.

    Strange times call for strange nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. And the times are indeed strange. So if the UK’s nego­ti­a­tions go awry, let’s hope the UK and US can get togeth­er and make the times stranger. It would be fun!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 28, 2016, 7:39 pm
  5. With talk of an ‘EU Army’ grow­ing in EU pol­i­cy-mak­ing cir­cles in the wake of the Brex­it vote, here’s a quick exam­ple of how rapid­ly plans of this nature might expand in the com­ing months and years. First, take a look at this WSJ arti­cle from just a cou­ple days after the Brex­it vote, when the EU’s for­eign pol­i­cy chief pro­posed that mov­ing for­ward with the EU army vision was clear­ly the thing to do to deep­en Euro­pean inte­gra­tion, espe­cial­ly since Britain was the biggest obsta­cle to such plans:

    The Wall Street Jour­nal

    EU Push­es Broad­er Secu­ri­ty, Defense Coop­er­a­tion After U.K. Vote
    Pro­pos­al sets out plan for accu­mu­la­tion of Euro­pean ‘hard pow­er’ that would allow the bloc to achieve ‘strate­gic auton­o­my‘

    By Lau­rence Nor­man
    Updat­ed June 26, 2016 7:59 p.m. ET

    BRUSSELS—Days after the U.K. vot­ed to exit the Euro­pean Union, the bloc’s for­eign pol­i­cy chief, Fed­er­i­ca Mogheri­ni, is set to present on Tues­day a plan to broad­en Euro­pean defense and secu­ri­ty coop­er­a­tion, in a bid to bol­ster Europe’s abil­i­ty to act inde­pen­dent­ly.

    Ms. Mogheri­ni will present her pro­pos­als, the first Brus­sels effort to lay out Europe’s glob­al strat­e­gy in more than a decade, to EU lead­ers at a sum­mit. Tuesday’s Brus­sels meet­ing is the first since the U.K. on Thurs­day vot­ed to exit the bloc, a process like­ly to take over two years.

    The U.K. has long approached EU defense and secu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives with ambiva­lence. While it has played a key role in craft­ing the bloc’s for­eign pol­i­cy and is a crit­i­cal provider of secu­ri­ty and mil­i­tary assets for spe­cif­ic oper­a­tions, the U.K. has resist­ed efforts to craft a uni­fied EU mil­i­tary struc­ture. It has pushed hard for Euro­pean defense resources to be chan­neled through the North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion, which main­tains a large net­work of com­mand and con­trol head­quar­ters.

    Ms. Mogherini’s pro­pos­al, which she played a cen­tral role in craft­ing, seeks to strike a bal­ance. While she under­scores the impor­tance of the EU work­ing close­ly with NATO and of the EU’s close diplo­mat­ic part­ner­ship with the U.S., she sets out the build­ing blocks for an accu­mu­la­tion of Euro­pean “hard pow­er” that would allow the bloc to achieve what she calls strate­gic auton­o­my.

    There is no direct push for an EU army or mil­i­tary headquarters—both British bête noirs. How­ev­er, there are ambi­tious calls for a buildup of shared mil­i­tary resources and plan­ning and for increased spend­ing on joint research and equip­ment pro­duced by Europe’s defense indus­try.

    “In this frag­ile world, soft pow­er is not enough: We must enhance our cred­i­bil­i­ty in secu­ri­ty and defense,” reads a draft pro­pos­al viewed by The Wall Street Jour­nal.

    The pro­pos­al says the EU should be able to mobi­lize resources rapid­ly to assist a mem­ber state threat­ened or hit by a ter­ror attack. Secu­ri­ty and defense oper­a­tions should be able to work along­side EU bor­der guard units and oth­er agen­cies to boost bor­der pro­tec­tion and mar­itime secu­ri­ty and to dis­rupt smug­gling net­works.

    The plan calls for addi­tion­al pool­ing of resources and more coor­di­nat­ed defense invest­ment plan­ning and EU-wide action to bol­ster the bloc’s defense indus­try. The pro­pos­al says enhanced EU intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance is need­ed, includ­ing invest­ments in drones and satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

    NATO, the pro­pos­al says, “remains the pri­ma­ry frame­work for most mem­ber states.” How­ev­er, Euro­pean “secu­ri­ty and defense efforts should enable the EU to act autonomous­ly while also con­tribut­ing to and under­tak­ing actions in coop­er­a­tion with NATO.”

    The pro­pos­al says all the bloc’s instru­ments, includ­ing secu­ri­ty and defense oper­a­tions should be able to deploy more quick­ly and flex­i­bly. That also includes the EU’s bat­tle­groups, rapid response units which that were sup­posed to allow the EU to rapid­ly inter­vene in a cri­sis; British oppo­si­tion means they have yet to be used.

    The pro­pos­al also tar­gets stronger plan­ning and com­mand struc­tures. While there is no men­tion of an EU head­quar­ters, the pro­pos­al does float the idea that a clus­ter of mem­ber states could craft more ambi­tious joint struc­tures under the EU’s so-called enhanced coop­er­a­tion process.

    Many of these plans build on exist­ing capa­bil­i­ties. The EU already has 17 mil­i­tary and civil­ian mis­sions out­side its bor­ders, includ­ing a year-old naval oper­a­tion fight­ing peo­ple-smug­gling in the Mediter­ranean and oth­er mis­sions for build­ing up mil­i­tary, police and bor­der man­age­ment resources in Africa and Europe’s east.

    The bloc launched a suc­cess­ful mar­itime naval oper­a­tion in 2008 that sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced pira­cy off the Soma­li coast.

    ...

    There is no direct push for an EU army or mil­i­tary headquarters—both British bête noirs. How­ev­er, there are ambi­tious calls for a buildup of shared mil­i­tary resources and plan­ning and for increased spend­ing on joint research and equip­ment pro­duced by Europe’s defense indus­try.”

    Ok, so that was back in June: while there was­n’t talk of build­ing an EU mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, it was pret­ty clear that the EU was going to use the Brex­it as a big oppor­tu­ni­ty to build up the EU’s mil­i­tary “hard pow­er” and give the EU a big enough mil­i­tary to allow it to act with more “auton­o­my” on the world stage. In oth­er words, while the EU isn’t declar­ing its plans to cre­ate a mil­i­tary that rivals the US, it would still like an EU mil­i­tary with the kind of hard­ware that will allow the EU to go blow things up halfway across the world and maybe invade a coun­try or two.

    Since an EU army is a log­i­cal con­clu­sion and inevitabil­i­ty of an “ever-clos­er Europe”, it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing that this is on the agen­da. Some sort of EU army was always com­ing, it’s real­ly just a mat­ter of when. But with the Brex­it now a real­i­ty, it looks like “when” is now. Or at least soon. For instance, flash for­ward a few months to today, and the new big EU army idea is get­ting a head­quar­ters:

    Reuters

    Post-Brex­it EU needs joint mil­i­tary HQ, Junck­er says

    By Alas­tair Mac­don­ald | STRASBOURG
    Wed Sep 14, 2016 6:31am EDT

    The Euro­pean Union’s chief exec­u­tive called on Wednes­day for a joint com­mand head­quar­ters for EU mil­i­tary mis­sions and greater defense coop­er­a­tion, reviv­ing long-run­ning efforts to reduce reliance on the Unit­ed States.

    In his annu­al speech to the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Jean-Claude Junck­er said no sin­gle EU gov­ern­ment had a mil­i­tary big enough to deal with secu­ri­ty chal­lenges on Europe’s doorstep, from Islam­ic mil­i­tants to a more hos­tile Rus­sia.

    The pro­pos­als, echo­ing a plan put for­ward this week by France and Ger­many, are part of a broad­er attempt to ral­ly EU nations after Britain’s vote to leave the bloc and to cap­i­tal­ize on its depar­ture — Lon­don hav­ing opposed the idea.

    “We must have a Euro­pean head­quar­ters and so we should work towards a com­mon mil­i­tary force,” Junck­er told the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, although offi­cials stressed this did not amount to an EU army. “This should be to com­ple­ment NATO,” he said, also out­lin­ing pro­pos­als for a com­mon defense fund.

    ...

    Lead­ers must also com­pen­sate for Britain’s depar­ture from the bloc. As Europe’s biggest-spend­ing Euro­pean pow­er, the British exit could reduce the EU’s mil­i­tary capac­i­ty by a quar­ter with­out steps to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion, ana­lysts say.

    Even before Britain’s deci­sion to leave the EU, years of defense bud­get cuts, as well as mil­i­taries that work in iso­la­tion, have dimin­ished Europe’s abil­i­ty to run mis­sions includ­ing peace keep­ing, dis­as­ter relief and counter-ter­ror­ism oper­a­tions at home and abroad.

    The plan, which fol­lows failed attempts in the 1950s and the 1990s, would not mean sol­diers all wear the same uni­forms, EU offi­cials say. It involves more coop­er­a­tion among coun­tries that wish to run mis­sions togeth­er, while avoid­ing dupli­ca­tion in devel­op­ing mil­i­tary assets at the indus­tri­al lev­el.

    More than three-quar­ters of EU gov­ern­ment defense con­tracts are award­ed to their nation­al indus­tries, while the bloc has 19 types of armored infantry fight­ing vehi­cle, com­pared to just one in the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to EU data.

    “From an eco­nom­ic point of view, bring­ing togeth­er our mil­i­tary resources could be clear­ly jus­ti­fied,” Junck­er said. “The lack of coop­er­a­tion is some­thing that is cost­ing Europe 20 to 100 bil­lion euros a year,” he said.

    Still, the Unit­ed States is wary about a new EU mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, wor­ried it would repli­cate NATO’s com­mand cen­ter, the Supreme Head­quar­ters Allied Pow­ers Europe, in Bel­gium.

    Wash­ing­ton wants to see EU gov­ern­ments spend more mon­ey on equip­ment and not waste it on head­quar­ters. One solu­tion could be to turn an exist­ing nation­al army and navy com­mand cen­ter in Ger­many or France into a Euro­pean head­quar­ters, experts say.

    “We must have a Euro­pean head­quar­ters and so we should work towards a com­mon mil­i­tary force,” Junck­er told the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, although offi­cials stressed this did not amount to an EU army. “This should be to com­ple­ment NATO,” he said, also out­lin­ing pro­pos­als for a com­mon defense fund.”

    While it’s true that cre­at­ing a EU mil­i­tary head­quar­ters does­n’t amount to an actu­al EU army, it is a pret­ty big step! And it’s anoth­er indi­ca­tion that this is real­ly is just a mat­ter of time and ‘EU army’-creep is prob­a­bly going to be a sig­nif­i­cant part of the EU’s evo­lu­tion over com­ing years. Espe­cial­ly now that Britain is out of the equa­tion.

    But that does­n’t mean won’t be sig­nif­i­cant resis­tance from the remain­ing states as this evo­lu­tion pro­ceeds. Because while join­ing togeth­er a large num­ber of mil­i­taries might sound like a neat uni­fy­ing idea, it’s going to sound a lot less for a lot of nations once they learn that their local defense indus­tries’ ser­vices are redun­dant and eco­nom­i­cal­ly unjus­ti­fied:

    ...

    More than three-quar­ters of EU gov­ern­ment defense con­tracts are award­ed to their nation­al indus­tries, while the bloc has 19 types of armored infantry fight­ing vehi­cle, com­pared to just one in the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to EU data.

    “From an eco­nom­ic point of view, bring­ing togeth­er our mil­i­tary resources could be clear­ly jus­ti­fied,” Junck­er said. “The lack of coop­er­a­tion is some­thing that is cost­ing Europe 20 to 100 bil­lion euros a year,” he said.

    ...

    It sure sounds like armored infantry fight­ing vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers are some down­siz­ing ahead of them. And prob­a­bly just about every oth­er mil­i­tary man­u­fac­tur­er except for the lucky con­trac­tors who get the big EU-wide mil­i­tary pro­cure­ment prizes. And that means that when we’re con­sid­er­ing the eco­nom­ic impact of that “20 to 100 bil­lion euros a year” in sav­ings that could be achieved by con­sol­i­dat­ing and uni­fy­ing the EU’s mil­i­tary sup­ply lines, the “sav­ings” is going to like­ly coin­cide with a big shift in defense spend­ing away from local defense indus­tries to a neigh­bor­ing EU mem­ber state. And since France and Ger­many are the big mil­i­tary hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers, with Ger­many being the third largest arms exporter in the world, it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that the big win­ners from this plan are prob­a­bly going to be Ger­man and French defense con­trac­tors, which might have some­thing to do with Ger­many and France are the dri­ving forces behind this plan.

    So while the EU army idea appears to be grow­ing by the month, and the long-run for­ma­tion of such an enti­ty is going to hap­pen in phas­es over a num­ber of years, keep in mind that we haven’t actu­al­ly reached the the phase where every­one learns that the cre­ation of an EU army is prob­a­bly going to turn into a giant sub­sidy project for the defense sec­tors in key mem­ber states. Or maybe it will be a wide­ly dis­trib­uted defense-spend­ing bonan­za that basi­cal­ly acts as a long-over­due EU-stim­u­lus. Either way, the while the EU army may not tech­ni­cal­ly be here as of now, it’s get­ting a head­quar­ters soon so it’s pre­sum­ably not too far away.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 14, 2016, 3:10 pm

Post a comment