Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-049"
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"en.20010117.2.3-049"2
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"Mr President, the European Commission boasts a whole raft of competences which are important in terms of a civil contribution to keeping those situations under control which threaten to get out of hand. Those competences can be deployed in the stabilisation phase following a violent conflict, to prevent the situation from hitting crisis point again. In addition to the usual aid personnel, these competences also involve monitors, the deployment of government officials, trainers and police. They translate into projects and aid policy specifically designed to bring stability to a certain region.
We very much welcome the dimension of political and organisational coherence in all these civil instruments in the form of a rapid reaction facility. In this way, the EU’s responsibility for the international legal order can be developed much more effectively. Furthermore, it gives the Commission and the competent Commissioner a chance to bring forward their own initiatives and proposals in this field.
In our opinion, the interplay between the rapporteur and the Commission has led to an excellent resolution. Particular efforts have been made to avoid introducing or maintaining superfluous structures which delay the decision-making process. The rapporteur is right to point out the need for funding this facility and the need for a well-trained unit for financial management and implementation.
My group prefers the Commission text to the rapporteur’s amendments on a number of scores. For instance, I find the list of examples and goals in Article 1 (1), which is what the rapid reaction facility will serve to achieve, very useful.
The report mentions the clear involvement of the European Parliament in the policy. Given the fragmented commitment of the Member States, also in the future, the report is right to call for a system of information exchange. Who knows whether more far-reaching coordination and guidance will be possible in the time to come.
We learn from our knock-backs, albeit with some delay. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo are important examples where a great deal went wrong and, slowly but surely, we learnt from our mistakes. The rapid reaction facility is, as far as this is concerned, an enormous step forward. We hope, of course, that it will need to be deployed as little as possible, but that is wishful thinking. We know that in politics, it is useful to have this option up your sleeve, as a complement to the rapidly mobilised military unit which falls within the remit of Mr Solana.
We think that in future, the European Union’s civil instruments will matter most in the sphere of maintaining law and order, and this is, of course, also what we want. For we too, like everyone else, would like to choose civil instruments over military instruments, but we need not press this point too much in this arena, given the large degree of hesitation whenever the need arises to deploy military instruments."@en1
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