Simply Smith

a euro-army is inevitable. This is the view of the incoming president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi.

He has suggested that the creation of such a force would take perhaps many years, but feels that "It's the next logical step unless you want the alternative; you will be marginalised in the new world history."

There are several points to this statement that maybe deserve a closer look. Mr Prodi advises that this step is "logical". He does not expand on the logic he is using. I feel that his logic is the logic of the madhouse: Alice's Wonderland.

A land where the King (Mr Prodi), the Queen (Ms Pauline Green) and the Jack (Mr T Blair) build nothing but houses of cards. One has to ask the question: to whom would this Euro-Army be answerable?

For example, consider the possibility of a member state wishing to withdraw from the European Union.

Let's imagine that the UK Government, democratically elected on a mandate to leave Europe, decided to cease paying any European taxes and to ignore European law.

The other member states, seeing a huge cut in funds, order the Euro-Army to intervene.

Of course, those in favour of setting up this standing Euro-Army would say that it could only be used for defending Europe against outside aggression. But then, they would, wouldn't they? No way would it be used to suppress the democratic process in individual member states.

Mr Prodi declines to give his vision of the "alternative". Does he mean that a Euro-Army would be more effective than NATO?

I would concede that NATO has its faults (like any human organisation) but I would rather a democratically accountable NATO than a Euro-Army responsible only to the European Commission.

My next point is that Mr Prodi does not define his use of the word "marginalised".

From a personal perspective if "marginalised" means being left to get on with life as one would wish, give me a surfeit of it.

Already the European Commission seems hell bent on centralising power to the European Union (another muscles from Brussels?) with an Army at its beck and call who knows what we will be "encouraged" to do? Perhaps Field Marshall Prodi would be a beneficent dictator.

Mr Prodi's final point concerns the "new world history".

Could this be an allusion to a New World Order, an idea much beloved of people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. Perhaps 1984 will become a fact twenty or thirty years late.

The whole timbre of Mr Prodi's statement smacks of totalitarianism and a further diminution of the individual's ability to affect his or her life. It even suggests a disenfranchisation of the whole of Europe.

Is this what the architects of the Treaty of Rome envisaged when they set up the European Economic Community in 1957? I think not.

The ultimate purpose of the European Union must be to further the well-being of its European citizens, not to further the individual ambitions of a small number of senior bureaucrats in Brussels.

Mr Prodi seems not to have thought through the consequences of his statement.

Or perhaps he has....

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.