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Members of the European Parliament (EP) have rebuked the European Commission for aiming to bypass them using an emergency clause to fast-track the legislative process. The reprimand came on Wednesday, March 12th, as MEPs adopted a resolution to endorse the basic outlines of the European Union executive’s colossal €800 billion defense investment scheme, as well as to call for the EU’s further military integration.

The core proposal of the Commission’s ‘ReArm Europe’ scheme is a massive €150 billion joint loan for arms procurement. To speed up the approval, Brussels is invoking Article 122 of the EU treaty, which allows legislative files to skip parliamentary negotiations during states of emergency and go straight to the EU Council to be tweaked and adopted by member states in record time.

This means that if the Commission proceeds as planned, the only EU body with directly elected members will have no say about the final contents of what is potentially the term’s most important package—except for holding meaningless debates and passing non-binding resolutions should it so wish.

Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen argued that this was “the only possible way” to act as urgently as required, since the EU Parliament is known to sit on files for months—if not years—before passing them on to the Council.

Nonetheless, most MEPs were outraged at the idea, regardless of political grouping. Even among members of the Parliament’s mainstream ‘Ursula coalition,’—who rarely disagree with the Commission—many questioned the official “urgency” rationale.

For instance, European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber warned that there is no EU democracy without involving the citizens—ironic, given how he consistently allies with the Left to exclude democratically elected conservative parties across Europe. The socialist S&D’s Sandro Routolo called invoking the article “a slap in the face to parliamentary democracy,” while the Greens’ Hanna Neumann said the Commission ignoring problems for years and then reaching for emergency procedures at the very last minute was “a pattern we need to break.”

Conservatives didn’t hold back either. Arguably, the most ardent criticism was delivered by Roberto Vannacci, a former Italian army general on behalf of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, who pointed out that using emergency powers to put future generations in debt for something that may yield results in five or six years cannot be justified.

In his explosive statement, Vannacci said it’s not Russia that’s “the real emergency,” but the energy and cost of living crises, mass migration, terrorism, and EU-supported violations of democracy, such as what’s happening in Romania right now.

 Former Italian Army General Roberto Vannacci humiliates Ursula von der Liar in Brussels.

Listen to him. pic.twitter.com/RM27iFzwq7

— Adam Moczar (@AdamMoczar) March 11, 2025

Road to an EU Army?

Despite the anger over bypassing Parliament, establishment MEPs still endorsed the €800 billion package, including the €150 billion in joint EU debt. They even went one step further and included calls for deeper EU defense integration.

Specifically, the document calls for the development of “a fully capable European pillar of NATO able to act autonomously” as well as the creation of an ‘EU crisis response air fleet’—comprising EU-held military aircraft to transport equipment and troops—as a first step toward an eventual EU army.

No wonder the resolution was adopted with a relatively small margin, with only the Ursula coalition (the EPP, S&D, Renew, and Greens), as well as half of the ECR, voting in favor—while the Patriots, ESN, and Left overwhelmingly rejected it.

ReArm or ReForm Europe?

Regardless of whether the Parliament will be allowed to have a say in it, the most important questions of ReArm Europe—such as ‘debt sustainability’ or whether to have a strict ‘buy European’ clause—will have to be decided by the member states in the Council.

But while EU leaders are fighting over technicalities and MEPs are being sidestepped in Strasbourg, most seem to be missing the big picture: the U.S.-provided reality check on Europe’s lagging defense capabilities has already been hijacked by the von der Leyen Commission to pull off yet another power grab and further its centralizing agenda, as we have seen with every previous such ‘crisis.’

It’s telling that Article 122 was used by von der Leyen twice before: once during the energy price spike after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and another time at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

During the latter, von der Leyen transferred unprecedented powers in the area of healthcare onto herself, allowing her to organize the joint vaccine procurement which turned into the largest corruption scandal in EU history with hundreds of millions of redundant vaccines thrown away at public expense. It also helped the Commission push through the joint debt to finance economic recovery, which is not only yet to be repaid but also introduced the ‘conditionality mechanism’ that’s set to be extended to all types of EU funds in the future, providing Brussels with a consistent weapon of ideological and political blackmail against member states.

It’s not a big stretch to imagine that ReArm Europe will ultimately serve a similar purpose: erode member state sovereignty and centralize more power in Brussels. First, you deepen countries’ dependence on the EU through joint public debt and simultaneously start building a common EU army that will eventually bring about the need for joint defense and foreign policy decisions, which, of course, will be unimaginable without abolishing member states’ veto power and gradually transforming the bloc into an EU superstate.

Original article: europeanconservative.com