Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-19-Speech-2-376"
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"en.20080219.32.2-376"2
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"Madam President, this was a very interesting debate. I always regret that it is held late at night and maybe so few Members stay, but thank you for staying. I think that many of you have mentioned what I personally also feel: there is a strategy that is absolutely necessary and this strategy aims to achieve stabilisation and security in this area. Indeed, we, the European Union, are very much in favour of going forward.
Kazakhstan will indeed hold the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010. I would like to tell you that I have always promoted that, always on condition that Kazakhstan continues to take a lot of important steps that are still necessary. More has to be done on the freedom of the media, on electoral law and on the issue of registration of political parties, but it is indeed going in the right direction.
Finally, Kazakhstan is a member of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Let us please keep the Central Asia strategy and the ENP somewhat separate, although elements of the Neighbourhood Policy can appear later on in a special agreement, particularly with Kazakhstan, because we know Kazakhstan can be the first country in the Central Asia region to start radiating a positive spirit. I hope that the others will follow.
I was Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE in 2000 and I got to know these countries and, as others have said, they are very interesting countries. They are all very different. It is true that Kazakhstan is the star of these countries, but a lot still has to be done.
There is the issue of human rights that everybody has mentioned. There is the issue of poverty eradication and, particularly, education, but also the questions in the general field of human rights and, of course, the big question of energy. So I know how much we have to do and I am glad that finally the European Union has done much more than in the past, together, as I said, with the German Presidency. I shall now say a few words on those different issues.
Poverty eradication is highly important and this is one of the major parts that we focus on in the country strategies. The policy paper that we have produced for the EU strategy for Central Asia is more a political document on political priorities, but in the country strategies we mention all the requirements under the Development Cooperation Instrument, which is particularly focused on education, on health, on rural development, on social protection and, particularly, on vulnerable families and children in difficulty.
There is also, in terms of public health and communicable diseases, a major factor: the global fund on AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, where, again, the Central Asian countries are eligible. So this is one side, and we will certainly go on with that.
On the other hand, there is the question of energy – both the Nabucco pipeline and the Odessa-Brody-Gdańsk pipeline have been mentioned – and, in general, energy security. I completely agree with you that we want a diversification of our energy policy, even if we have not yet completely reached where we want to go. But the most important thing is that we have taken this clear decision.
On the Odessa-Brody-Gdańsk pipeline, I would like to say that the Commission is making every effort to diversify EU energy supplies and routes and, of course, Central Asia is absolutely crucial here. The pipeline you mentioned is an important project in these efforts, and to feed this pipeline, we need to work first and foremost on the trans-Caspian pipeline, to get the Central Asian resources to the Black Sea. Just a few days ago, we had the first ever regional conference of the Black Sea Synergy, which was a very first step in working on these issues in a regional dimension.
Apart from that, we also face the issue of energy security regarding the Nabucco pipeline. It is still a priority for the Commission and we will go on supporting it. It is not dead, as some of you might think. So we have energy political priorities. By the way, we are starting to have a sort of memorandum of understanding on energy with Turkmenistan too. We already have one with Kazakhstan, and we will certainly try to go on building bridges between the different countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Somebody asked me about Mongolia. The five countries of the Central Asia region share the same recent past, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, and they are all, of course, very young nations. This means that we face similar challenges regarding the political and economic transformation of these societies, but, as you know, Mongolian history is quite different, and that is why we did not include Mongolia in the strategy. However, we do not preclude looking to the south of the Central Asian countries and we are looking towards the possibility of working further with Mongolia. Today, it is a rather democratised country, where we see a lot of positive measures and positive steps."@en1
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