Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-29-Speech-3-111"
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"en.20001129.8.3-111"2
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". – Perhaps I can begin by commenting on what my honourable friend Mr Hume has just said. He has done more than most as a personalised version of conflict resolution in a part of the world which I know well and has been properly commended globally for his efforts.
Experience over the past few years has made clear that European Union external action is more than just a juxtaposition of declaratory politics and technical cooperation. We need to integrate three strands into a coherent whole, Community policies, CFSP, including ESDP, and national action by Member States. There needs to be a sensible and sensitive partnership in the external field between the institutions of the Union, including the European Parliament, and a very close coordination with Member States. Our challenge is to ensure that the world’s largest trading group and provider of development aid also makes its presence felt politically. We have a real contribution to make and we must not be afraid of doing it.
For the Community, this means reforming our external assistance, improving our internal procedures and creating a framework within which we can mobilise the whole range of Community instruments in support of our agreed external objectives. We are not seeking new competences. We do not need new competences, but we want to exercise the powers we already have under the Treaty more effectively and I have every sympathy for the European Parliament’s desire to do the same.
Mr Védrine pointed out in his remarks the priority which we have given to reforming our external actions and to delivering our programmes more effectively and more wisely. I have spoken a number of times to Parliament on that subject and I do not wish to do so again at any length today. However, we have made progress and that has been largely thanks to the leadership we have received from the French Presidency. We have worked extremely effectively together in trying to ensure that Europe’s taxpayers are able to see the sort of programmes delivered which they have every right to see and that the beneficiaries in countries all around the world get the assistance they require as rapidly as possible, supporting the most high value projects.
I note the call in the honourable gentleman’s report for common strategies on Africa, Latin America and the Western Balkans. Dwelling for a moment on the Western Balkans, I find it difficult to accept that we need a common strategy on the Western Balkans, we actually have a rather good strategy on the Western Balkans. It was reflected in the report which Javier Solana and I made to the Council earlier this year. The challenge for us now is sticking to that strategy, ensuring we can make that strategy work, ensuring that, in holding out the prospect of a closer relationship with the European family, we can help those countries make the economic and political changes and reforms required in order to secure their stability and long-term prosperity.
I would like to thank the honourable lady, Madame Lalumière, for highlighting the report on conflict prevention, which the Commission is preparing together with the High Representative for the Nice European Council. The Commission intends to follow up on this joint report with a communication next spring on the integration of conflict prevention across the board in the programming of our external assistance programmes. On crisis management, the Commission adopted on 27 September a draft decision on the establishment of a Community mechanism for coordination of civil protection interventions in emergency situations. This draft decision is now before the Council and I very much hope that it will be shortly adopted.
The draft regulation establishing a rapid reaction facility, which should be adopted by the end of the year, will allow the Commission under one budget line and one legal base to carry out a number of actions simultaneously so as to respond quickly to a crisis with a wide range of instruments. I just want to repeat one thing about it, we are talking about a rapid reaction facility. That is what the Commission is asking for. The Commission is not involved with the creation of the rapid reaction force. Again, I refer to the sometimes not entirely balanced and objective media in my own country, who seem to have some difficulty in comprehending that distinction. It is an administrative measure that we want, an administrative measure to allow the occasionally slow Commission to react faster in a crisis. Even with our laborious procedures in the Commission, we do not need a force of 60,000 soldiers to accomplish our objectives. We do need the support of Parliament in helping us get these draft regulations approved as rapidly as possible.
Like the minister, I will just say a word in response to the honourable gentleman, Mr Brok, on Afghanistan. We are concerned, as the minister said he was, at the recent upsurge in fighting in the northeast of Afghanistan, concerned at the resultant worsening of the humanitarian situation of the population, many thousands of whom have had to flee their homes in order to avoid the conflict. The European Union through its common position on Afghanistan of 14 January earlier this year is committed among other things to the objective of bringing about a sustainable peace in Afghanistan. In this it supports the central role of the United Nations through its special envoy, Mr Vendrell, in trying to bring the parties of the conflict together in an effort to establish a broad-based government for the country. The European Union also encouraged other peace efforts, including those of the six plus two group, the initiatives of the former king and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, in their efforts to intercede to bring about peace in Afghanistan. At the same time, the European Union continues to urge countries concerned to stop the involvement of their military, paramilitary and secret service personnel in Afghanistan and cease provision of all other military support to parties in the Afghan conflict.
With respect to the provision of aid, the Commission largely through its humanitarian aid office, ECHO, has made a number of specific interventions this year aimed at alleviating both the effects of the catastrophic drought in the country by supporting, through provision of funds for food security and winterisation kits, the population's displaced by the fighting in the northeast of the country. So far this year, these commitments and those in preparation have totalled more than EUR 14 million. Member States also made individual contributions in addition to those sums.
Lastly, can I underline what others have already said. We have come an extraordinary long way in a remarkably short time. People who occasionally accuse the European Union of sclerosis, of not being able to take initiatives, of not being able to show vision, of not being able to move forward and respond to the problems of the modern world, should perhaps look at the progress that has been made in the last months in a very short period towards the creation of a CFSP which has its own integrity and very substantial potential value. It is a remarkable contribution. I hope we in the Commission will be able to make a contribution to the sensible discussion of conflict prevention. Our other major contribution is to show that we can manage the jobs that we have already been given, a lot more competently in the future than we have managed in the past.
Of course, he is right in what he says about the contribution which the European Union has made to conflict resolution. A Japanese-American political scientist wrote a book with the unhappy title of “The End of History" in 1989. As we know, we have actually witnessed a good deal of history since 1989, but one point on which he was absolutely correct was that we saw in 1989 the end of a particularly shaming, and all too long, period in European history. We all know that the genesis of the European Union, the main objective of the founding fathers was to prevent Europe tearing itself apart in yet another civil war. That has been not the least of the achievements of the last few years, as we have consolidated liberal democracy throughout our continent, which is the great task that the French Presidency will steer us towards accomplishing in Nice. We are now faced with the problem of ensuring that when we talk about consolidation of liberal democracy in Europe, we mean the whole of continental Europe, because that is what enlargement and the enlargement process is all about. That is why the enlargement process is not just a strategic issue – not just an economic issue for us, but a moral issue as well – an issue very close to what the honourable gentleman was talking about when he referred to conflict resolution.
I did not come to talk about that and I should respond to my honourable friend, Mr Brok, and the honourable lady, Mrs Lalumière, and thank them for their excellent reports. They and the motions for resolutions building upon them provide us with some extremely ambitious guidelines for our future work. I am gratified that they are on the whole very supportive of the external action of the European Union, as it has been developed by the Council, the Commission and, since his arrival just over a year ago, my colleague, Javier Solana. I very much agree with the content of those resolutions and reports.
It would not be sensible to try and address tonight all the points raised in those reports and resolutions, nor is now the moment to try and circumnavigate the globe in a discussion of our foreign policy. I would like instead to make just a few remarks on some of the key elements of the ESDP and the common foreign and security policy, which are highlighted in the two reports.
As the ministers have pointed out in their excellent speeches, recent weeks have seen important developments in strengthening Europe’s contribution to its own security. I do not want to go over the ground they have covered nor, as I have made clear very frequently, are the military aspects something for the European Commission. They are not – repeat not – matters for the European Commission. The only expertise I could possibly bring to the debate is that of the former commander-in-chief of the garrison in Hong Kong. This is rightly a matter for Member States. It is rightly a matter for ministers to decide. It is not a matter for European Commissioners.
I find some of the coverage that the creation of this force has received in the country I know best quite extraordinary. It is said that it undermines NATO, but NATO has, of course, made it perfectly clear that it supports what European ministers are trying to do. We are told that the United States is opposed. One newspaper in Britain on Sunday declared in a headline, “US to pull out of NATO if EU force goes ahead”, but the United States administration strongly supports the initiative. It has said so repeatedly. Every time a member of the American administration points out how much they support what Europe is trying to do, someone pops up in the media of the country I know best to say they do not really understand what is in their own best interest. Every time it happens someone else is trooped out, usually from some previous administration or some ancient period in our transatlantic relations, to say that things have changed and this would really be damaging to the relationship between Europe and the United States.
What is absolutely clear is this: first of all, what would really damage the relationship between the European Union and the United States is if we were not to go ahead with what we have now proposed – if we were not to make a success of what we have set our hands to. Secondly, there is one other thing which we need to be clear about. No one is suggesting that the United States intends or wants to reduce its strategic commitment to Europe. What people do realise increasingly is there is going to be, and it is understandable, growing reluctance on the part of American public opinion to commit American lives to coping with the consequences of bloody, little European tragedies.
I was in the United States during the debates on “Larry King Live” and everywhere else during the run-up to the bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo crisis. That is exactly what the tenor of all those discussions and all those debates was then. There is plenty of evidence, as I have said, that if we do not do more for ourselves, it will have very damaging consequences for our relationship with the United States. In the recent history of Bosnia, we saw a situation in which some of our soldiers were very often put in intolerable positions, not just militarily but morally as well. The recent history of Kosovo underlines the importance of Europe doing more for itself. Now we are trying to do that, and frankly it is both fatuous and malicious to suggest that this is the creation of a European army or an attempt to kick the Americans out of Europe.
I fully agree with what my honourable friend Mr Brok has said in his overall conclusions on the Common Foreign and Security Policy. We have come a long way since the decision in Maastricht in 1991 to take the step from political cooperation towards a common foreign policy. Much remains to be done to develop a strong CFSP. There is need for further reinforcement of coherence and effectiveness in the external activities of the European Union cutting across the pillars."@en1
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