PREPARATIONS for Sir Keir Starmer’s EU ‘surrender summit’ next Monday, May 19, continue apace. Reports indicating that a joint commitment to the ECHR will be made, that UK negotiators are exploring plans to pay into the EU budget in exchange for access to the Single Market, that a leaked draft has steered clear of the term ‘illegal’ migration, referring to it instead as ‘irregular’ migration in a softening in the approach to border control, seem to have generated staggeringly little alarm. Yet what looks to be Starmer’s ‘unilateral’ decision to ‘return’ the country to the EU fold comes against a background of growing calls for the UK to leave the ECHR and heightened public anxiety at the migration invasion.
Worst of all, which has received next to no notice, is the planned defence pact that is the most fundamental of all to our sovereignty. That it would give it away altogether seems to have slipped almost entirely under the radar, as explained in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series on Labour’s big defence sell-out. Is ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ so bad across the MSM, I wonder, that former Brexiteers prefer to see Starmer in the arms of Macron, Merz and Ursula von der Leyen? The latter being the only one missing from this jolly weekend train gathering.
If you wanted a visual of how comfortable Starmer is about selling our British interests, this is it. Time is getting short for the British public to wake up to the Theresa May Remainer replay going on. It’s even the same actors involved – they are back at the centre of negotiations, as pointed out by Veterans for Britain (VfB) in their evidence submission. Sir Olly Robbins, May’s chief Brexit negotiator dropped by Johnson, is now Permanent Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. Angus Lapsley, the former senior Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office official, who illegally carried secret and confidential documents out of a secure MoD area during covid, later became Nato Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning and from last month UK Permanent Representative to Nato. Jonathan Powell, the Downing Street Chief of Staff to Tony Blair has been appointed UK National Security Adviser by Sir Keir Starmer.
While concern is less about the creation of an EU Navy, Army or Air Force (unlikely in the short to medium term at least because many EU member states are against it – Poland in particular opposes it and the Constitution of Germany, with its limitations on the deployment and employment of military force, is a major obstacle that is unlikely to be overcome) the worry is that false fears may be a smokescreen for what really matters.
This is the creation of a European ‘Defence Union’. Rather than relying on co-operation or shared defence responsibilities between nations which are enduring characteristics of Nato, the EU Defence Union is about integrating every aspect of defence, including budgeting, procurement, development, the roles of the armed forces, training and exercises, and finally deployments. Veterans for Britain believe this will apply even ifthe Commission is unable to create unified armed forces subordinate to their orders. Sovereign government responsibilities, for which the government remains accountable to those who vote and pay taxes, will be done away with by this. VfB explain how this will work:
‘Every element of EU bureaucratic complexity is directed towards maximising leverage. The European Defence Fund, or EDF, given clearance on 18 April 2019, is the central financial pillar of the EU’s structures for defence under the EDA. It currently deploys only a relatively modest direct budget, but it works indirectly by leveraging nations’ resources through policy compliance – members having to agree to abide by the EU’s rules – and also by making grants to encourage sovereign nations to make changes to their defence budgets that further align them to the centre. The governance of CARD – the Coordinated Annual Review of Defence – strengthens the leverage of the EU over national decision-making. The governance of wider EU defence procurement links CARD and the EDF to PESCO, the latter by the use of a premium from the EDF for joint programmes within the EU; and also with the EU’s Capability Development Plan (CDP) which sets priorities; and the Capability Development Mechanism (CDM).
‘All these are parts of the wider structure to which the UK would have been bound by the Political Declaration of 2019, and to which the current Labour front bench has indicated its commitment. In this respect we note the continuity of officials from 2019 to now . . .
‘The Proposed Pact is not just cooperation, but an extension of the EU’s powers over not only the armed forces and intelligence services, but also defence industries. The various structures – CSDP, EDA, EDF, CARD, CDP, CDM and PESCO – all of which are interlinked, are the pillars of the European Defence Union, ironically perhaps ranged alongside partnership with the Nato and UN as laid out in Article 42.1 of the EU Treaty, which together build the EU global defence and security policy, as put into effect through the European Defence Union.
‘Under the existing EU Treaty, member states are bound by Article 42.7, which is similar to Nato’s Article 5 in that it obliges members to render mutual aid to any other member if attacked. Member states are also expected to prepare for such an eventuality. All members except Malta are already in PESCO’s binding commitments, so they are doing that anyway. However, in February, EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, speaking at the European Space Conference, announced that the EU Commission has unilaterally extended the trigger for Article 42.7 to include an attack on space assets – i.e. satellites, space stations and space vehicles. This is another area in which the goalposts have shifted since 2019. Currently, Article 42.7 speaks of member states’ ‘territory’ not assets – so this is a precedent that could be applied anywhere.
‘Although the EU Treaty speaks ofa commitment to Nato, the risk is obvious: that the creation of EU structures and especially, its establishment of control over resources, will detract from the capability of Nato and the ability to rebuild and repair its force elements. Nato remains an organisation of sovereign states, founded on a treaty, with mutual commitments and guarantees, including those to its latest members, Finland and Sweden. Its administrative organs remain just that: the Secretary General and his staff have no powers or responsibilities for the deployment or employment of nations’ armed forces, nor do they lay down rules on what to buy. Nato has developed doctrine and procedures to enhance interoperability; and it has command and control structures to which, for operations or exercises, nations assign forces under various levels of authority. But nations remain responsible and accountable to their people for the consequences of doing those things.
‘Recent American language by Secretary of Defence Hegseth putting Europe on notice to defend itself and not rely on the US umbrella has encouraged the EU Commission and others to turn up the volume on the creation of European armed forces outside national controls. Poland’s defence minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, unsurprisingly said no to that idea, as noted earlier. This will not, however, stop the EU Commission from pushing ahead with all other arrangements.
‘Using the possibility of a reduced US military presence in Europe – a presence which European countries have taken for granted for decades, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the latest attempt to push through an integrated EU military structure in the “ReArm Europe” initiative on 25 February 2025. This new “tool”, as it is described, involves EU nations increasing defence spending by 1.5 per cent of GDP to raise €650billion over four years, with another €150billion coming from eurobonds. The plan involves five major instruments:
- States will be able to remove defence expenditure from the EU excess deficit procedure
- The €150bn loan
- Redirecting ‘cohesion’ funds to defence [NB, these have been used, until now, for environmental programmes and cross-border transport infrastructure projects]
- Enhancing the role of the European Investment Bank [NB, this has previously mainly focused on development, infrastructure and environmental programmes]
- Mobilising private finance [undefined]
‘On the credit side, the ReArm Europe programme does address the issue of capabilities rather than simply percentages of GDP – in particular drones, missiles and integrated air defence. The US Army has provided an example here, by identifying 17 major capability gaps, brought about by neglect or the conversion of conventional assets for counterinsurgency, that need to be repaired. This is a highly important point, because, just as when we were threatened in 1936, talk of only numbers, such as, today, percentages of GDP are meaningless unless they are tied to the generation of capabilities. Building modern, high-technology capabilities requires defence cooperation and collaboration, and agreed common procurement plans to cut costs – but that is not the same as handing over control of sovereign national assets.
‘The plan has, however, already run into trouble in the Netherlands, where the Parliament has rejected it in spite of its being approved unanimously by the EU Council, as the Dutch clearly understand that this is a further attempt to undermine national sovereignty, using concerns based on a perception of the current situation vis-à-vis the US and Ukraine to rush the plan through without proper consideration of the consequences.’
We will publish the final part on the sell-out of the UK’s defence industry tomorrow.
For any reader concerned about Labour’s big defence sell-out please sign this petition to ‘Hold a UK referendum before joining any defence and security pact with the EU’ here.
*Veterans for Britain’s fully referenced evidence submission, which, at the start, details the questions they were required to respond to, can be found here. The signatories to this submission are:
Jonathon Riley CB DSO PhD MA Lieutenant-General (Retd), late GOC British and Coalition forces in southern Iraq, DCOM, NATO ISAF Afghanistan (Chairman)
Roger Lane-Nott CB FCMI FIAgrE, Rear-Admiral (Retd), late Flag Officer Submarines
Julian Thompson CB OBE Major-General (Retd) Late Commander 3 Commando Brigade, Falklands War, and Commandant-General, Royal Marines
Tim Cross CBE Major-General (Retd) Late DG, Defence Supply Chain and Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee
Gwythian Prins PhD Research Professor Emeritus LSE and late Senior Fellow in the Office of the Special Adviser on Central and Eastern European Affairs, Office of the Secretary-General of NATO
Richard Kemp CBE Colonel, former infantry commander
