?Willy Meyer on the External Action Service:

"Mr President, Mrs Ashton, Mr. Šef?ovi?, apologies but my group will not vote for the report on the European External Action Service tomorrow.

"We will not do so, firstly, because during this complex process, you have yielded to pressure from some Member States and, secondly, because our group does not see adequate respect for what we consider fundamental to the structuring and monitoring mechanisms of the service. We didn't want this to become a sui generis body, and needed guarantees that the European Parliament and national parliaments would retain not only budgetary control, as established in Madrid, but also parliamentary and political. Remember that we are the only democratically elected institution in the European Union.

We are particularly concerned that the military structures of the European Union, as well as the civilian, should be part of this Service. We consider it a mistake to link institutions with military personnel to the EEAS: the European Defence Agency, Directorate of Planning, and Crisis Management, not to mention intelligence.

"Programming, planning and implementation of financial instruments in particular and the rest of the instruments in general, from our point of view, should not be part of the EEAS. We also believe that, given the significant military orientation of this service, most of the civilian component of European foreign affairs policy can and will remain under the umbrella of European security and defence policy, and, in particular, everything related to development cooperation and conflict resolution.

"Alas my group will not vote for this report, as for us, it does not deal with the fundamentals. In Madrid it is true that progress was made in relation to budgetary control. But we are all aware that the European Parliament will not have the last word. Therefore, on this basis, my group is forced to vote against this report.