European Gendarmerie Force

23.1.2008

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0363/08
by Ashley Mote (NI)
to the Commission

Is it correct that the Treaty of Velsen, signed on 18 October 2007, allows the European Gendarmerie Force to recruit staff from countries that might at some future date become members of the EU?

Is it also correct to deduce from that Treaty that the EGF will, in due course, be installed in the UK to operate on British streets, and that both EU and non-EU nationals may be involved?

If the British Foreign Secretary, in a written answer in Parliament, was correct in claiming that the EGF is ‘outside of (sic) EU structures’, why was the signing of the Velsen Treaty announced on the website of the Portuguese EU Presidency? Indeed, why did that announcement also include an approving reference to the involvement of Turkish personnel in the EGF? Does that not signal that the EGF is — in reality — the paramilitary wing of the EU?

But if the EGF is indeed ‘outside EU structures’ why does it use the EU’s ring of stars emblem as well as a flaming hand grenade?

Is not the truth much simpler? Surely the development of the EGF as the EU’s paramilitary organisation is a reflection of institutional fears of increasingly reluctant nation states? Does it not signal a new type of enforcement of EU decisions? Does it not tell nation states that the EU’s much vaunted ‘shared management’ is coming to an end?

Is this the start of the end-game? Does the development of the EGF indicate an assumption that the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified by all 27 nation states and confirm that military power is already being seized by the ruling elite?

OJ C 291, 13/11/2008