Now comes the hard part, making the European Union work better under Lisbon Treaty rules. Are you going to continue?

The European Defence Agency, despite its rather grandiose name, is essentially just a research and development organisation for military equipment. The importance of this could probably be best demonstrated by the recent EU peacekeeping mission in Chad (where EU forces were defending refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan). Despite being under a common command structure, different countries had very different equipment. Italian vehicles, due to the climate and dust, were frequently broken down by the side of the road. French engineers, despite being far more used to the conditions (and having vehicles that were running fine), neither had the training nor the equipment to fix the Italian vehicles, so the Italians had to wait until their own engineers ad equipment could be helicoptered in before they could make it to the refugee camps. Given that military procurement is almost entirely kept within the country involved, and you end up with these sorts of problems, there are clear inefficiencies when EU countries are involved in vital peacekeeping missions like this.

The EDA is an attempt to rectify these problems by developing common equipment standards and pooling research to prevent duplicated spending. What’s more, each country can opt in and out on a project-by-project basis, so if there’s any research that we don’t want to be involved in, we don’t have to contribute anything to it.

Article 28

“Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities. The Agency in the field of defence capabilities development, research, acquisition and
armaments (hereinafter referred to as “the European Defence Agency”) shall identify
operational requirements, shall promote measures to satisfy those requirements, shall contribute to identifying and, where appropriate, implementing any measure needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defence sector, shall participate in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy, and shall assist the Council in evaluating the improvement of military capabilities.”

I know it’s a bit too late since the voting is today, but if you have a minute to shoot a PM to me giving me your view on this, it may sway my vote tonight. I’m not against Europe, but in my view the whole idea off making EDA a legal part of EU institutions doesn’t send message that we are really a peaceful crowd.

I think the problem with the Treaty is that it has too many things in one document and though I like most of what I see there (give or take some minor details), I don’t see EDA as a guarantor of peace and would like do without it. But….

Thanks a million for your detailed post!

The only people backing Blair are the pro-labour British press. Even the tory press aren’t backing him.

Thanks for that. I’d get a nosebleed trying to assemble that list.