Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-15-Speech-3-010"
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"en.20000315.1.3-010"2
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"I congratulate the President for domestic reasons. I would now like to speak, on behalf of the Socialist Group, in this debate which follows what we consider to be a satisfactory statement from the Council on the Geneva Convention. I will begin with an initial comment explaining the reasons why my Group tabled a resolution on this same subject during the last session of Parliament in 1999. This resolution was never debated for reasons which we will not go into here.
It seems to us highly appropriate to speak in the European Parliament of regulations which have enriched humanity’s legal heritage and we should take every opportunity to recall and strengthen the validity of those instruments given the protection they offer and the rights they safeguard.
Another reason for adopting a resolution such as the one we are tabling is the fact that much of the work of the European institutions is aimed at finding balance and equality, and these are concepts which are almost completely incompatible with armed conflict. The main victims of conflicts – children, women and the population in general – are the first to be threatened and to suffer and we must make their protection one of the priority objectives of our action.
The more we do to prevent violations of international humanitarian law, the more we remind other states – by means of all the opportunities which our foreign relations offer us – of the need to ratify and respect the Geneva Convention and the more we will be doing to protect these weakest groups. The more suffering we prevent, the less action we will then have to take to repair the great damage caused by war.
What more can be done therefore to increase compliance with international humanitarian law and thus limit the suffering of the victims? For example, we can spread the knowledge of this law, particularly throughout society itself, amongst young people, within mass organisations and also in the armed forces and security services. Above all, we must, through education, instil a passion for peace amongst our citizens. In this respect, the European Union must be a prime agent for peace, but it must also provide strong support for the efforts of those organisations which the international community has entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the victims of conflicts and defending their rights. Amongst these organisations, we should highlight the International Committee of the Red Cross. All the institutions of the European Union must decisively support the work of the ICRC, because their role is quite simply indispensable.
Lastly, I do not consider it acceptable to say, as the Commission did in its response to my question a couple of months ago, that it does not have the competences nor the resources for actions aimed at promoting international humanitarian law, thereby demonstrating that its approach is basically bureaucratic and that its sensitivities are very different from those expressed by the Council in reply to another question in which I expressed a concern of this type. It is also different from the sensitivity demonstrated today by the Council in its intervention.
In this area, the institutions of the European Union – including the Commission of course – have a generic responsibility, because this is a question of spreading and promoting essential values which, furthermore, are the same as those which underpin our European project.
For all these reasons, Mr President, I ask you to support the resolution tabled, which contains all the main elements of the proposal presented by the Socialist Group at the end of last year."@en1
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