The European Union, long-promoted as a ‘peace project’ by supporters, is seeking to create a laser weapon which can disintegrate human heads.

European Commission research programmes officer Dr Erno Vandeweert bragged that the 100-kilowatt weapon, which has been likened to the famous Moonraker laser from the James Bond film franchise, would be so powerful that if its beam struck a human target “the whole head would disappear”.

But there are concerns that the rush to begin the project before Brexit are an attempt to cut the legs from under Britain’s own pioneering Dragonfire laser — with the help of British tech and EU budget contributions.

“Anyone who thinks British taxpayers should pay for [European Commission President] Jean-Claude Juncker to play Blofeld with a giant ray gun must be off their heads already,” remarked Taxpayers’ Alliance chief executive John O’Connell.

“Britain is a world leader in laser technology and it is ridiculous to suggest that Britons should subsidise the EU’s efforts to catch up.”

Macron’s talk of ‘EU military sovereignty’ this morning was nothing new.

It featured in Juncker’s June 2017 speech (our paper below) and is enacted in centralising, protectionist structures of the European Defence Action Plan of November 2016 which are now agreed and functioning. pic.twitter.com/ZGeFXcG3NB — Veterans for Britain (@VeteransBritain) April 17, 2018

“This appears to be a blatant attempt for Brussels to start a Brexit arms race with the UK,” added Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley, a board member of the pro-Brexit Veterans for Britain group and former ISAF commander.

“They are playing catch up on our brilliant technology and defence ministers must make sure nothing is shared with what looks like a rival to the UK’s Dragonfire.”

The danger of the proposed ‘Deep and Special Partnership’ is that it puts us neck-deep in EU defence diktats after Brexit.

The two parts ministers unwisely want to keep actually necessitate all the others.

UK in all of them and even joined several in 2017. All developing at pace. pic.twitter.com/TlwctwoHW7 — Veterans for Britain (@VeteransBritain) March 23, 2018

The EU’s ambitions to create a laser weapon independent of non-EU countries and suppliers seem to undermine its claims to be a ‘peace project’ responsible for 70 years of harmony since the Second World War.

Such claims have always been somewhat dubious, given there was little opportunity for Germany to rise again while it was cut in half and occupied by several massive, nuclear-equipped armies from NATO and Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War.

Nor were the EU or its predecessor organisations able to deter Soviet aggression in European countries beyond its own membership base, or Turkish aggression in Cyprus.

Moreover, it arguably exacerbated conflict in the former Yugoslavia with a confused and contradictory foreign policy — first supporting the Communist federation, then endorsing breakaway republics, and finally opposing the secession of Serbian regions within those breakaway republics.

Professor Richard Sakwa has argued persuasively that EU foreign policy has been similarly harmful in Ukraine; attempting to force the eastern European country into a binary choice between Brussels and Moscow and then backing a mob putsch against its elected government when it made the ‘wrong’ decision.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery