Open Letter to Joschka Fischer: Will 'Think globally, act locally' be replaced by 'Think Eurocentrically, act militarily'?

• Author: Gahrton, Per
• Position: Brief Article

I have waited two weeks before writing this letter. On January 12 you presented the program of the German Presidency in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. As you can imagine, I listened with great interest and great hope; it was the first programmatic foreign affairs declaration of a green President of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. You can imagine that I was expecting something particularly special and Green. During your speech I began feeling uneasy, and this feeling increased when my Swedish colleague from the conservative Liberal Party came over to me and congratulated me: "Excellent! With Greens like Joschka Fischer even I could be a Green!" The Swedish Liberals have long stood against the Swedish politics of peace and neutrality and in favor of a militarization of the European Union.

I took my copy of the minutes and looked carefully at your text. Joschka, I am still irritated. I have to ask you, is there anything in your text which could not have been said by Helmut Kohl as well?

You are proposing the integration of the West European Union (WEU) into the EU. You must know that not only the Green Group in the European Parliament but the Green Federation of some 30 green parties from all over Europe are speaking out against any form of militarization. You address the EU as a "strong and decisive global player" and state that the EU has to "bring forward its importance on the global scene." What do you mean by this? These are the same words I am used to hearing from my colleagues in the Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament, when they speak Out for the new superpower EU to defend the European economic and strategic privileges against the poor of this world, towards Africa, Asia and Latin America.

And what about the EU-police? You said, "we have to continue to intensify the cross-border cooperation of the police and to strengthen the operational capacities of Europol." You are even in favor of it becoming "the next step to giving the European police institutions a European-wide power to operate." What do you want, an EU-FBI, an EU-CIA, an EU-KGB? You should know that in addition to the Green Group in the European Parliament, the Green Federation is very critical of such a centralized police power structure.

You want to abolish the last pieces remaining of self-determination in the small EU member states--their veto power has to be abolished, [decisions will be made] only by majority votes in the EU...