Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-12-Speech-3-228"
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"en.20011212.7.3-228"2
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".
Mr President, over the past few years, conflict prevention has developed into a real ‘feel-good’ concept, to use a traditional Dutch phrase. Everyone is in favour of conflict prevention. Why not? There is always something that can be done with it, and why should it not be included in a list of measures?
In that way, conflict prevention slowly developed from a priority of and for pacifists, via a kind of interesting subsidiary activity alongside military activities, to what I would call one the European Union’s central ambitions, currently recognised by many. It is no longer a plaything of one group, it has become the central pursuit of the European Union as a whole, and this is also the reason why the time has come to translate much of what has been written to date about conflict prevention – stunning reports have been published over the past few years, also by the European Commission, for which congratulations are due – into practice. Fortunately, we do not need to start from scratch, for notably experience in the Balkans over the past ten years has taught us what the European Union is capable of, and has already done, in the field of conflict prevention.
As you may know, I am also rapporteur for the Stability Pact, which I always extol as the greatest conflict prevention project. I am really convinced that the coherence in this programme between democracy, economic development and security is an illustration of how conflict prevention has developed from a concept on paper to a very usable instrument in practice.
In my report, I have outlined three points, and today, I should like to do this again. Maybe the most straight-forward point, yet very tricky in practice, is the cooperation between the European Union and the OSCE. Everyone says that this should be done, that it is positive that it happens, and it is already happening. In a high number of locations, cooperation with the OSCE is good, but all too often, I visit places where this cooperation is faltering. I visited Macedonia recently, with a few fellow MEPs, where the European Union has an observation mission, but so has the OSCE. Cooperation between the two is not really ideal, to put it mildly.
A week ago in Bucharest, the Commissioner made a number of sound proposals for cooperation between the EU and the OSCE, for example in the southern Caucasus and in Central Asia. In my opinion, it would be good if in future, the Commission could possibly monitor cooperation with the OSCE more effectively than it is doing now. The OSCE often has the same mission and is often active in the same field. This applies to each campaign – including the Balkans, where, once again, things often go well but all too often they do not – in order to better implement this cooperation and this distribution of tasks.
A second point in my report is the European Civil Peace Corps. Once again, one could state with a certain degree of self-mockery that it has developed from a fun plaything of the Greens to a crucial instrument in the EU’s toolbox. I would therefore call on the Commission not simply to be grateful to Parliament for the concept of the Civil Peace Corps, as it did five or six years ago, and do nothing else with the idea, but instead to seize the opportunities now, which I am convinced are presenting themselves, to develop this European Peace Corps and to turn it into a central point of EU policy. This is possible, not only because I, or Parliament, welcome it, but also because in the meantime, experience has been gathered with civil peace observers. The European Union has an observation corps and has observation missions in several places worldwide. Germany and Sweden have experience of training civil observers, and I believe that the time has come for the Commission, for the European Union, to better coordinate and pool this expertise and these people, so that in future, the European Union is not only able to act rapidly at military level, but also when it comes to sending civil observers.
Finally, I have come to the third point, which may well be the most sweeping in my report. I would positively welcome it if conflict prevention were to be removed from the remit of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy. What do I mean by this? It is no longer acceptable for us to talk about some or other EU policy, for example in the field of agriculture or trade, of which we are of the view that it should serve, for example, to better develop Africa’s economy, while at the same time continue to apply components of that policy – and I would cite the well-known export subsidies – of which we know that locally, in Africa for example, they do not have a stabilising effect. If anything, they mess up the economic structure or hamper its development.
I would prefer it if in future, conflict prevention, like human rights and the environment, were to become a goal of all EU policy, not only in the external policy area, but also in the area of trade and agriculture, for example. If that is possible, if it is possible to make conflict prevention a central point in all areas of EU policy, then I will be happy, and what I refer to as a hobbyhorse of the ‘soft’ forces will then have developed into the favourite subject of the hard core of the EU’s policy abroad and all over the world."@en1
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