Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-207"
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"en.20080903.23.3-207"2
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". −
Mr President, the Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Mr Lavrov accused Mr Kouchner of having a ‘sick imagination’ when he talked about sanctions against Russia. It was on this ‘imagination’ that I was asked to work during this report. I would like to thank the Commission and the Council, which proved perfectly available and helpful.
Make no mistake. I am not talking about taking away the Council’s prerogatives of political impetus or the Commission’s right of proposal; I am simply talking about offering the guarantee of an informed decision.
However, that is not all. Sanctions are an instrument. They are one instrument of many – I am referring back to the first two reports by the Subcommittee on Human Rights – a comprehensive and integrated policy needs to be developed; there can be no effective sanctions without a human rights strategy for the country in question. Sanctions must be discussed at all levels and the monitoring mechanisms, for example the ‘human rights’ clause, must be used to the full.
All sanctions against a country must be accompanied by visible, and therefore political, but also concrete support for human rights defenders in the country. That is also one of the report’s key points.
To finish, this report also considers that any voluntary and irreversible damage to the environment generates human rights violations and it therefore asks for its inclusion among the reasons for applying sanctions. It recalls that EU sanctions are not just against third countries but also against physical and legal entities such as mercenaries or indeed multinationals, which defy international law by operating almost with impunity. In short, this report tries to respond to the current nature of world crises.
What is today’s debate on sanctions in fact about? It is essentially about two things: the first is a critique of the use of sanctions to punish dirty rotten scoundrels on the international scene, namely anyone who tries to block my strategic interests: politicised sanctions with double standards. The second critique considers the fact that sanctions are not effective, essentially because they have perverse effects, people always get round them, and they should therefore not be used. The purpose of this report is not to call for more sanctions, or for harsher sanctions, or for sanctions to be abandoned. It is essential for us to find out what conditions make sanctions effective and the aim of this report is actually to examine them from all angles.
Effective in relation to what? In relation to what we are trying to achieve. As regards violations of human rights or international or humanitarian law, what we must aim for is a change in the behaviour of those being targeted. That is the key point. Sanctions are neither a punishment nor the application of a kind of European criminal code for international use. Sanctions are, politically, a tricky tool to handle and are very demanding to implement, and they seek to achieve a change in practices and behaviour.
Very reluctant to go for all-out sanctions, the EU is currently maintaining 31 sanctions regimes against third countries or entities, mostly arms embargoes and targeted sanctions designed to have maximum impact on the entities whose behaviour they intend to influence, while limiting as far as possible any harmful humanitarian effects. On the face of it, this is something positive but I cannot tell you any more at this stage. The EU continues to act without ever having carried out any overall impact assessments. We therefore remain rather powerless to evaluate the ability of our sanctions to solve crises and promote human rights.
The aim of this report is therefore to speak up for a more transparent, more consistent and therefore more credible European sanctions policy.
The first essential job is to undertake an evaluation exercise. The second is to adopt a stringent method, through prior studies of specific situations where sanctions are required to decide the best response to bring about a change.
Over the last few days, you have been through the measures at the EU’s disposal to influence the Russian authorities, for example. The positive conclusion we can draw is that the stated objective is clear and can be evaluated practically. That is, compliance with the six points of the agreement. It has to be this way in all circumstances. It is essential to include clear benchmarks, which should, until the end – and that sometimes means for a long time – remain necessary and sufficient conditions to be met for the sanctions to be lifted. These benchmarks therefore need to be realistic and objectively measurable.
Although the arms embargo imposed on China after Tiananmen is perfectly legitimate, we should not be surprised if it is not having any positive effects since the European Union did not make the lifting of the embargo dependent on any particular demands.
All too often, the sanctions policy is vague and flexible, swayed by the political contingencies of the most influential Member States or the commercial or geopolitical importance of the targeted entity. That is why, to give the EU’s policy credibility, I am proposing the creation of a network of independent experts responsible for helping the Commission with the difficult job it does, under incredible circumstances since it has almost no resources to do this."@en1
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