The idea of EU treaty changes in the areas of foreign and security policy to make Europe more resistant to external threats, for example by introducing qualified majority voting in the Council, was fiercely opposed by ECR MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski today in an expert hearing in the joint committees on Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Affairs.

Such postulations, “are based on a wrong diagnosis and a wrong reading of the geopolitical challenges. When you have a wrong diagnosis, you prescribe the wrong cure,” Saryusz-Wolski said.

The ECR coordinator on Constitutional Affairs stressed that the biggest problem in the EU was not a lack of instruments, but a lack of political will. It is well known that the Franco-German tandem had a very positive attitude towards Russia. Replacing unanimity by qualified majority voting in foreign and security matters would be devastating.

“Imagine that under such a revised foreign policy, dominated by the Franco-German line, Ukraine would have been lost already long ago and we would have Russian troops at the Polish-Ukrainian border”, Saryusz-Wolski said.

“The disastrous appeasement policy of Germany and France for years: this line would put us in the hands of the Russians. A revision of the treaties in this sense would therefore endanger us rather than save us”, he added.

“Taking away foreign policy from Member States would mean depriving them of the core of their sovereignty and would touch on an existential question of life and death.”

Regularly, experts are invited to the European Parliament to give advice on how to expand the powers of the European Union. This is despite the fact that the process of possible treaty changes in the wake of the Conference on the Future of Europe can be considered a virtual failure due to strong opposition in the Council. In Saryusz-Wolski’s view, the federalists, or advocates of an even deeper union, who hold the majority in the European Parliament, have as their highest priority to further undermine the existing EU treaties.