An Irish MEP was seized by police officers and bundled down the street after trying to attend a secretive meeting between the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security and arms industry lobbyists, concerning its new military integration plans.
Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, a left-green independent Member of the European Parliament for the Republic of Ireland, said there were “No dissenting voices welcome” at the closed-door meeting between Federica Mogherini, who also acts as vice-president of the European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker, and “defence industry ‘experts'”.
They were supposedly discussing the Permanent Structured Cooperation process, or PESCO, between 23 EU member-states including the Republic of Ireland, which is widely understood as a major step towards the creation of a fully integrated European Army.
“I am a Member of the European Parliament!” Flanagan tells police as they drag him down the street by the scruff of his neck. “I’m entitled to be here!”
The MEP is subsequently instructed he may not even walk down the same street as the building where the meeting was taking place, prompting him to ask: “Is this what the new, free, open Europe is about, is it? Is this what we signed up to?”
The police appear unwilling to tell Flanagan why he is not allowed to attend the conference, prompting him to accuse them of being no better than the East German police who shot people attempting to escape the Communist state at Checkpoint Charlie during the Cold War.
“This is all part of the drive towards what is euphemistically called ‘ever closer union’ but which is, in fact, the drive towards a United States of Europe (USE), a militarised USE, a power to rival the USA, China, Russia,” the MEP asserted in a later statement.
The Irishman believes the “paw-marks of [arms industry] lobbyists [are] all over recent legislation on ‘defence and security’ budgets”, which threatens the Republic of Ireland’s long-held position of official neutrality.
“The nonsense that this doesn’t threaten our neutrality is just that — nonsense” he added. “[W]e’ve joined a Defence Union, for God’s sake!”
Disgusted by what he sees as the Irish government’s craven attitude towards the European Union and its leading member-state, Germany, “on this, as on so much else”, he observed that “they can’t bend low enough, can’t be seen too EU-friendly enough, more than happy to pour Irish and EU billions into the coffers of the European arms industry”.
He demanded: “At what stage does all this become too much? Do we have ANY tipping point?”