The EU’s Foreign Minister has been criticised for never having visited her own organisation’s head quarters in Brussels.
Details of her absence from the European Defence Agency (EDA) were revealed in an answer to a question put by Conservative Euro-MP David Campbell Bannerman.
At a meeting of the European Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee earlier this week Mr Campbell Bannerman asked the Chief Executive of the EDA, Madam Arnould,  whether her boss Baroness Ashton (Head of the European Defence Agency) had visited the EDA Headquarters. Madam Arnould had to admit that there had been no visit at all, even though the Headquaters are barely a 10 minutes drive from Ashton’s personal office.
On hearing the news, Mr Campbell Bannerman said: “I fully understand that with her background as former Treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) – ‘The Red Baroness’ Ashton would clearly prefer to ban the bomb than to discuss our defence, I really do think it quite extraordinary that in the two years since her appointment she hasn’t been able to make the 10 minute journey to visit her own Defence headquarters.”
Britain’s membership of the EDA is due to be reviewed in a years time, Mr Campbell Bannerman claims the organisation is a wasteful duplication that the UK can ill-afford in the current economic climate.
He added: “Although I’m not in favour of the EDA and it’s ambition to form a single Euro army, it beggars belief that its own Head, the person responsible for the EU’s dangerous Common Foreign and Security Policy, will not deign to visit her own headquarters.
“What an insult that is to the good military and defence people there!”
ENDS