Large arms companies and their lobbyists are benefiting from the growing anti-Russian rhetoric in the European Parliament, contributing to a rising "militarism" within the bloc, Clare Daly, an Irish member of the European Parliament, told Sputnik in an interview
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th February, 2021) Large arms companies and their lobbyists are benefiting from the growing anti-Russian rhetoric in the European Parliament, contributing to a rising "militarism" within the bloc, Clare Daly, an Irish member of the European Parliament, told Sputnik in an interview.
Commenting on the state of current EU-Russia relations, Daly said that she thought diplomatic ties between Brussels and Moscow had deteriorated.
"I do think things diplomatically are deteriorating considerably and I suppose ... that a large part of that, in my opinion, is to justify the growing militarism in the EU," she said.
Daly said that some of the European Parliament's committees, including the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, contained members who espoused generalized anti-Russian views that were "not in any way source-based or referenced."
"The only people benefiting from that are the arms industry, and the big military-industrial complex lobbyists here are just rubbing their hands with glee every time new contracts and new budgets are mentioned for their shareholders to be enriched by this. It's not in the interest of the citizens of Europe at all," she said.
As part of the bloc's current Multiannual Financial Framework, the EU will establish the European Defence Fund, which the European Commission said in December will receive 7.9 billion Euros ($9.5 billion) from the bloc's multi-year budget.
According to Daly, the EU has to create an enemy to justify this level of expenditure.
"For the first time now in this budget we have direct expenditure on defense coming from the main EU budgets. Obviously that's multiplied with member states' expenditure as well, and if you're to justify that level of expenditure, you have to have an enemy, and there's no doubt that all of the dialogue is framed as if 'the Russians are coming,'" she said.
With the creation of the European Defence Fund, the EU will have a dedicated program to support defense industrial cooperation for the first time, Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, said in December.
Breton added that the scheme will help deliver "state-of-the-art and interoperable defense technologies."
