Complacency Still Rife On European Security and Defence Policy

4.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 5th Jun 2008

The European Parliament has debated and endorsed an annual report on the European security strategy and the European security and defence policy.

Commenting on the substance of the report, Andrew Duff MEP, Security and Defence Spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, said:

"Member states are dreadfully complacent about the present state of the EU's common foreign and security policy.

"It's all very well having a grand European security strategy, but it should be followed. In fact EU governments have ignored their own strategy.

"The UK and France have failed to deliver what the 1999 St Malo agreement promised in terms of integration.

"Other countries have insisted on miserly and self-defeating policy that military costs should 'lie where they fall'. What is the point of that when the aim is to share the burden?

"European armies are not being modernised. Only 20% of EU armed forces (almost 2 million troops) can actually fight.

"ESDP missions are improvised and amateurish and the fact that there is no European HQ fragments command and impairs the pooling of intelligence and resources.

"The EU has so far failed to learn from its mistakes. Just tweaking the European Security Strategy, as Mr Solana proposes, won't make the difference."

ENDS