Extinction Rebellion targets weapons lobby ASD in Brussels

This morning, activists from the climate movement Extinction Rebellion (XR) Brussels staged an action at the offices of a major European arms lobby, the Aerospace Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD). They transformed the sign in front of the offices into a tombstone and spread fake blood over the pavement. With banners saying ‘Lobbying for death – this arms race will kill us all’ and ‘Stop ReArm Europe, Stop Arizona’, the activists claimed that the rearmament politics of Belgium and Europe will have disastrous consequences for people and nature. The action is part of a XR campaign against ‘fossil fuel and ecocidal corporate lobbying in Brussels’, demanding the European institutions to ban such lobbying activities.

ASD is one of the biggest European arms lobby, representing 14 multinationals and 26 national defence associations, among which companies like Airbus, BAE systems and Leonardo.

XR decided to target ASD because it claims that ‘the arms lobby locks us into fossil fuels for decades to come and causes worldwide destruction to people and nature, like the genocide in Gaza’. While most countries don’t report their military emissions are they’re excluded from climate treaties, independent scientific estimates in 2022 put the total military carbon footprint at 5.5% of global emissions. This is already more than all international shipping and aviation combined, and almost double the annual carbon footprint of a country like Japan.

XR’s action takes place in the midst of European rearmament, while estimates are that if Europe achieves 3,5% GDP spending on the military - on the low end of the new NATO-norm - the continent’s CO2 emissions will rise by 12%. This represents about a fifth of all emissions reduction since 1990.

‘This European Commission is destroying any chance of the EU achieving any of its stated climate goals by massively boosting the arms industry and giving the arms lobby everything that they want’, activist Root explains. ‘European politicians, from conservative to green, are claiming that rearmament is necessary for our security, but the reality is that this rearmament will only further escalate the climate crisis, and no one would be safe from its deadly consequences.’

ASD and the arms lobby has been lobbying hard to rid itself of its image as an unethical investment. They have complained about banks and pension funds not wanting to fund them due to their ‘sustainable financing requirements’, and they seem to have found the European Commission on their side on this fight. Last year, the Commission encouraged private investment going into the arms industry, claiming that such investment ‘enhances sustainability’ because of the arms industry’s stated contributions to peace. The EU just opened the door for more investments into ‘controversial’ weapons to be labelled as ‘green’ investments, while already European ‘green’ investments are being used to fund the most deadly of all, the nuclear arms industry.

Activist Root continues: ‘The relationship between arms lobbyists like ASD and European political institutions is completely unhealthy, bordering on the corrupt. The chair of ASD, together with representatives from Airbus, BAE systems and Leonardo, sits on a so-called ‘Group of Personalities on Defence Research’, which decides on how the EU should spend our tax money on their military research. We now have a European Commissioner for Defence telling the arms industry that he will change all ‘our laws and rules to remove all obstacles’ for them. Gone are our labour rights, human rights, climate and nature protection, all for maximizing profits of the arms industry.’

The activists also voiced their support for the unions’ struggle against the Belgian ‘Arizona’ government’s pension plans, claiming that the government ‘is not trying to balance the books or reduce the deficit, but is defunding our hard-fought social rights in order to fund the arms industry.’ They explain: ‘At the same time that the European Commission is telling Belgium to cut its social spending, it is encouraging the government to take out more loans to buy arms. Less money to save lives, with social safety, healthcare and climate action, and more money to death and destruction. It’s high time the fight for our climate survival and for our social rights converge to stop this descent into militarism and war.’