Neutrality

Sinn Fein is committed to the maintenance of positive neutrality and an independent foreign policy. Neutrality is as valid today as it has been in the past, as this generation of Irish people have invested it with new meaning, relevant to the challenging international situation that they face.

• Being in favour of neutrality does not mean being anti-Europe. Ireland should aim to promote European and International security through a policy of disarmament and demilitarisation. Sinn Fein therefore opposes the militarisation of the EU and the participation by Ireland in NATO, the Western European Union or the Partnership for Peace.
• Military neutrality allows Ireland to maintain closer relationship with people of the third world and to work with them for a more equal distribution of the worlds resources.
• Sinn Fein opposes the creation of an EU army `to fight the resource wars of the 21st century'. Involvement in an EU army would compromise the valuable peace keeping role played by the Irish army serving abroad under the auspices of the United Nations.