Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-241"
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"en.20080903.23.3-241"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by responding to Mrs Flautre, also to Mr Romeva I Rueda and to those who spoke of the need to have an appraisal, to have an evaluation and impact assessments. This does indeed seem very important to me, and the Council shares Parliament’s concern to be able to take these sanctions decisions, and to update them, on the basis of the best possible information. The existing measures are regularly re-evaluated on the basis of impact assessments and the Council bases its decisions as often as possible on reports from the heads of mission in the country, who are best placed to judge their effectiveness.
The Council has also considerably developed its consultations with local and international non-governmental organisations, and today Parliament has shown that it has a very important role to play in this evaluation.
What is also true, however, is that sanctions are an instrument that must remain political in nature. We do need to have a strategy from the point of view of methodology, but we cannot fence ourselves in, nor can we give the process an automatic nature – I just want to say that as clearly and responsibly as possible here – therefore there will always be differences in our assessment. To answer Mrs Koppa as well, whose speech was very sophisticated, sanctions remain a political instrument. They are not the only instrument for promoting human rights. There are two other instruments which stigmatise the countries they are targeting less, but which are also a tool for promoting human rights, and these are the conditionalities provided for in the enlargement policy of the Stabilisation and Association Process with the Balkans and the Neighbourhood Policy, and mandatory human rights clauses in all the agreements that the European Union enters into with third countries or groups of countries, the violation of which can lead to the suspension of these agreements.
I would like to reassure Mrs Koppa that there is no embargo on pharmaceutical products, but a system of control where these products have dual uses and are therefore subject to the non-proliferation regime. The Council shares the view of many that sanctions should remain targeted and should not affect civilian populations.
Mr Cappato and Mr Gawronski also raised an important issue, and several speakers came back to the question of environmental damage. At the moment, damage to the environment does not feature among the objectives of the common foreign and security policy, so it is true that from that point of view, it is not taken into account and we should be thinking about whether to include damage to the environment where it constitutes a threat either to international security or to the rights of people, to human rights. That is a discussion we need to start. I would also like to say to Mr Cappato that in the cases mentioned, energy sanctions have already been used by the European Union and this has been in a variety of circumstances.
I just wanted to go over a few cases that several of you mentioned: recent events, obviously. Concerning the war between Russia and Georgia, I would say very clearly here that sanctions cannot achieve their aim if the consequence is to break off all contact with the country concerned, in this case Russia. Finally, we also need to think about whether imposing sanctions in this case would be in Georgia’s interest. I would ask you all to think about that.
I will also come back to what has been said about the benchmarking process. It was mentioned by Mrs Saks. It is a very important issue, particularly as regards Uzbekistan; it is true, having been there for a conference on Central Asia and the European Union’s presence in Central Asia. When I was there I also met Mrs Tadjibaeva, a political prisoner, who has now been released; we hope that her health will improve and she can be given the proper care, but I was also able to see that a good benchmarking policy meant that progress could be achieved and that there was commitment from the authorities to meeting more fully the criteria defined by the European Union. As it happens, we will be returning to the country in October.
As regards Cuba and those who mentioned it, I would like to remind you that the sanctions against Cuba were lifted in June 2008, which is not stopping us from keeping up rigorous monitoring of human rights developments in the country.
Those were the clarifications I wished to make at the end of this extremely detailed and rich debate, which demonstrates the necessity of Parliament’s involvement."@en1
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