PRESS RELEASE

After the reintegration of France into the NATO integrated command decided by Nicolas Sarkozy in March 2009, the government has just taken a new step by proposing to NATO to host in Toulouse a new NATO Center of Excellence exclusively dedicated to space.

In 2019, the allies adopted a NATO space policy and recognized space as a field of operations, in the same way as air, land, sea and cyber. This policy aims to support Alliance operations and missions in areas such as communications, navigation and intelligence. The arrival in power of J. Biden should perhaps modify certain approaches. Discussions are underway with his partners, and we will know more at the next NATO summit.

Beyond official speeches, France is strengthening its presence within NATO. Thus, the US Army ship “Endurance” docked in La Rochelle in July 2020 to land men and equipment for the US Army’s relief in Germany and Poland. A French nuclear attack submarine and a French support ship recently sailed in the South China Sea where China has strong territorial claims, while major US/NATO maneuvers in this region in 2021 are announced. Florence Parly sees this as “striking proof” of the French Navy’s ability “to deploy far and for a long time in conjunction with our strategic partners in Australia, the United States and Japan“. The minister also explained that France has an exclusive economic zone in the Indo-Pacific region, and that it intends to protect its sovereignty and interests there.

France already hosts NATO facilities such as the Franco-German air transport base in Evreux for air transport and the Mont-Verdun base near Lyon for the surveillance of civil and military flights in conjunction with the one in Aix-en-Provence.

NATO’s budget is about 130 times that of the United Nations, whose objectives are the maintenance or restoration of peace and development aid in all its forms. This budget represents about 60% of the total arms expenditure in the world, $1,917 billion.

European Union and NATO are strongly linked, the EU treaties, especially the Lisbon Treaty, entrust NATO with its defense: NATO membership, in fact, conditions the accession to the EU of the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe. One could speak of consanguinity.

NATO was already illegal because it did not respect the United Nations Charter; the TPNW further aggravates this illegality by compromising all the countries “hosting” nuclear weapons.

Le Mouvement de la Paix calls on our country to leave NATO completely and to urge all other member countries to do the same and to demand, with us, its dissolution.

Paris, 22/02/2021

Le Mouvement de la Paix

Download CP MvtPaix OTAN-ENG.pdf