On Saturday, the Conference on the Future of Europe passed proposals that call for the creation of a European Union army and the concentration of power in the hands of Brussels eurocrats.
The Conference, which was meant to bring more democratic voices to the way the EU runs by adding so-called “citizens panels” last year, has been criticised for doing the exact opposite.
Last year, the Conference on the Future of Europe was founded with the goal of bringing individuals and politicians from around the EU together to brainstorm ideas for reforming the organisation.
More than 300 ideas were adopted by the conference plenary in Strasbourg on Saturday, which was made up of delegates from EU institutions, national parliaments, and citizens’ panels. National vetoes would be abolished, the European Parliament would be granted the ability to propose laws, more money would be invested in climate change mitigation, “joint armed forces” would be established, and transnational voter lists would be established.
Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt MEP, the Conference’s globalist co-chairman, stated that the European Parliament will debate the proposals next week in the aim of passing them into law “as soon as possible.”
“There is no time to lose. The world of tomorrow is a world of empires,” the europhile said. “It’s a world of danger, we have seen it with Ukraine, and in this world we need to defend ourselves, to organise ourselves to defend the interests of our citizens, and therefore we need to reform the Union.”
Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chosen representative in Brexit talks, went on to say that the reforms are “necessary for our survival,” warning that Europe will otherwise “disappear” and come under the control of “autocrats instead of the liberal democracy we have”.
Others, on the other hand, have suggested that the Conference’s proposals only serve to weaken member states’ national sovereignty, particularly conservative ones with less clout in Brussels.
Despite Brexit and concerns about the erosion of national sovereignty across the bloc, Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers, who previously compared the Conference to “Communist China or Cuba,” argued that the “citizens panels” were not representative of populations across the bloc and that they were carefully curated by those seeking further expansion of European Union power.
“While the participants are supposedly randomly selected, they are, by the EU’s own admission, provided with professional support and guidance which in great part explains why the panels never recommend that any EU powers be limited or repatriated to the Member States,” Weimers wrote on Friday in the Brussels Times.
The Swedish MEP, who is a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament, went on to say that “with very few exceptions, identical to the policy objectives and goals already set by EU leaders, especially the federalist Spinelli-Group.”
“If the panels were intended to provide new ideas from grassroots perspectives, they must be said to have failed remarkably – but then, that never was the intent. The European federalists have only ever intended to speak and listen to their ever-dwindling cheering crowd, seemingly blissfully unaware of the growing anger on the ground over their disconnect and disrespect of ordinary citizens.”
During the Brexit debates, pro-European figures dismissed the formation of a fully-fledged European Union army as a “conspiracy theory,” with then-Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg accusing Brexit leader Nigel Farage of peddling a “dangerous fantasy” by predicting the bloc would seek to form its own military.
Even after EU member-states signed an agreement creating a European Defence Fund and Permanent Structured Cooperation process (PESCO) in November 2017, Clegg, who would be knighted and given a high-paid job with Facebook after being voted out of both government and Parliament by the British people, maintained that a European Army was “fictional.”
Since 2001, a European Union Military Staff has been operating under the radar.
Since Brexit, calls for an EU army have only grown. Following President Joe Biden’s catastrophic pullout from Afghanistan, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated the union needed to have the “political will” to construct its own military force.
According to European Council President Charles Michel, Afghanistan’s failure proved the necessity for the organisation to strengthen its “strategic autonomy.”
While the EU is currently Russia’s single largest sponsor in the war in Ukraine, handing over €44 billion in exchange for gas and oil, the building of such a military force would almost probably be predicated on Russia’s perceived threat.