Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-187"
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"en.20040914.11.2-187"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we naturally share Parliament’s stated desire to come to the aid of the civilian communities of Darfur and to put an end to a civil war that has been appalling from both a humanitarian as well as a political perspective, and to do so, as has already been mentioned, with the support, for example, of the African Union’s initiatives. While it is useful and essential, however, to be a good fire-fighter, I feel that it is even more essential for us not to lapse into starting fires of our own. I should therefore like to address the subject of access to oil resources, which is becoming increasingly difficult and beset by conflict. It is an issue that has, to terrible effect, been fanning the flames of the situation in Darfur for a number of years.
It is a familiar scenario: tensions and wars intensify as access to oil resources becomes a source of conflict and a major issue both for a number of international powers and for the local powers. Not only are the USA and Europe – particularly France, which has a major influence in the region – implicated in this situation, but so are China and a number of Asian countries. We are also all aware of the scandal of the misuse of oil revenue, which often serves only to fuel the personal enrichment, corruption and arms purchases that we see today, not to mention the worsening breaches of the human rights of the communities affected, all of this against a backdrop of successive dictatorships that are, in turn, sometimes supported more or less openly by the same people who are today expressing outrage at the situation.
Faced with this situation, I feel that the EU has major responsibilities and is duty bound, at world level and thus within the UN, to launch an entirely different energy policy, one that is fair, sustainable and genuinely intended to serve the citizens, and to do so with the help of politicians, oil companies and civil society. We must also step up the fight against financial crime and against tax havens; we must block the financial accounts and the profits of dictators and profiteers of all kinds. We must, of course, offer our solid support for alternative energy policies both at home and in countries such as these, and Europe must also be much more demanding and much more vigilant as regards the support offered by the major providers of international funds to certain oil projects, such as the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline. We must support civil society and the democrats in these countries and, in short, must be able to act diplomatically, politically and economically in a coherent fashion. I feel that this could constitute an essential and even priority task for the future representative of a strong common foreign policy – a policy that we all wish very much to see."@en1
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