Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-03-Speech-3-192"
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"en.20081203.17.3-192"2
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"Mr President, as you have said, we are running very late, and I would like to apologise to the Members for this.
To conclude, I should like to say that we are working together towards the construction of a responsible approach to arms exports, and I should like to thank the European Parliament for its assistance in this matter.
It can count on the commitment of both the Council and the Presidency.
I shall introduce this debate but, unfortunately, I have other commitments and, given the unexpected nature of the delay, I am unable to withdraw from them. I shall therefore ask the General Secretariat of the Council to take my place during the debate and, obviously, to provide the Presidency with a very detailed report of its conclusions.
I wish to draw your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the fact that the transformation of the Code of Conduct into a common position is an important objective for the French Presidency and that it is necessary to give a legal basis to the responsible approach adopted by the Member States with regard to arms exports and to increase the points of convergence between nations.
Your resolution of 13 March demonstrates that you also share our point of view concerning this issue. Discussions have been resumed in recent weeks. We are doing everything we can to make progress on this issue before the end of the French Presidency. The adoption of a common position will constitute an instrument that will help make it possible to implement a responsible policy designed, in particular, to avoid such exports being used for the purposes of internal repression or international aggression and prevent them from fuelling regional instability.
We are convinced that the Union’s initiative, within the framework of the United Nations, of establishing an arms trade treaty will gain in credibility once our own system for the control of the transfer of armaments becomes legally binding, and we support this House’s opinion emphasising the urgency of converting the Code of Conduct into a legally binding instrument.
We also support your opinion concerning the need to establish effective control of arms brokerage operations. The Member States have agreed that the commitments relating to the exchange of information provided for in the Council position of 2003 should be implemented by means of the mechanism established within the framework of the Code of Conduct.
Therefore, although certain Member States have not yet adopted the legislation necessary for the transposition of these commitments into national law, I can assure you that all the Member States possess regulations in this field. The task now is to update these regulations so that they are fully compliant with the Council’s common position.
The adoption of common regulations concerning the control of exports in the form of a common position will also enable the Member States to strengthen their own controls of arms brokerage operations. The illegal movement of arms is another problem that concerns us, and the EU’s strategy on small arms and light weapons clearly indicates the need to act in order to stop or hinder the illicit flow of arms. This action was reinforced in Vienna on 6 December 2007 during the meeting of the 40 States participating in the Wassenaar Arrangement on export controls for conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies.
The Presidency supports the idea of examining the possibility of extending these best practices to the destabilising movement of small arms and light weapons, in particular by sea. Despite the delay in adopting a common position, I should like to emphasise the fact that the Code of Conduct is a particularly effective instrument that has made a significant contribution to the harmonisation of the Member States’ national policies in the field of arms export control and, to this end, I should also like to point out that harmonisation is facilitated by the user guide, which provides guidelines followed by the public officials who are responsible for this area. This guide is regularly updated and therefore makes a very great and practical contribution to the efforts to harmonise national policies in this area."@en1
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