There would be no European army, the Finnish Prime Minister has told the National Forum on Europe.
"NATO will remain the stronghold of European defence for the countries that have chosen military alignment," Mr Paavo Lipponen said in Dublin Castle yesterday.
"Others, like Finland, will want to retain their options. Today non-alignment enjoys strong support in public opinion in Finland."
He said Finland and Ireland shared a policy of non-alignment but still contributed actively to international security through UN peacekeeping missions.
A joint initiative between Finland and Sweden had made it possible to build an EU crisis-management force so that Europeans could shoulder their own responsibility in a crisis like the one which arose in the former Yugoslavia.
"European crisis management is conducted with the same premises as similar operations under a UN mandate: the decision on whether to participate or not will be taken individually by each country."
On the developing crisis over Iraq, Mr Lipponen said the EU had a common position that there must be clearance by the UN Security Council for military operations.
Dr Uno Silberg, an economics lecturer and chairman of the No to EU movement in Estonia, compared the EU with the former Soviet Union.
"Today we have to stay alert continually and resist the national occupation called the European Union. In the eyes of many Estonians the EU is nothing less than a disguised Soviet Union. The goal of each of them was, and still is, is to force its power upon Europe in the name of a form of federal socialism.
"The mechanisms involved are similar: the federal superpower of yesterday and tomorrow takes charge of the domestic and foreign policy of new and old member-states and the economic gains deriving from the effect of huge size in an enlarged market.
"The newly-created European Convention is just a smoke-screen for achieving this goal."
Several pro-EU delegates challenged Dr Silberg's equation of EU membership for Estonia with its position in the former communist bloc. Mr Tony Brown, of the Labour Party, said he was "almost uncannily" reminded of a document from the Irish debate on membership in the early 1970s which described the then-EEC as a kind of fourth reich. "I would just ask you to look at the Ireland you are visiting today. None of that has come true."
The Prime Minister was asked by Mr Roger Cole, of the Peace And Neutrality Alliance (PANA), what the attitude of the Finnish people would be to the provision of landing facilities to US military aircraft, as our own Government had done in the case of Shannon.
Mr Lipponen said Finland was a member of the NATO-linked Partnership for Peace and had taken a decision in principle to make its airfields and logistical facilities accessible to NATO forces, which include the US. This was subject to a decision on specific cases.