Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-10-Speech-3-010"
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"en.20100310.6.3-010"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the Union needs to adopt a new approach and make a joint effort when facing global challenges. The powers recently obtained due to the entry into force of the treaty mean that Parliament engages in frequent, cooperative and effective discussions with our primary interlocutor, Baroness Ashton, who has the honour of acting as the new Vice-President/High Representative for the first time.
Her mandate was subject to our consensus vote in January and, on several occasions, the Parliamentary Assembly was promised that the Council and the Commission would be constantly involved in all the most important aspects of European security and defence. As the report itself confirms, the High Representative is therefore called upon to appear before the European Parliament and to consult it frequently and regularly.
With the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union’s external action takes on a new and important dimension, but actually achieving this goal also depends on the European Union having the necessary budgetary resources. The European Parliament has a key role to play in its capacity as custodian of the democratic legitimacy of external action. The creation of a European External Action Service will give a diplomatic body and system to the European Union which, until now, has only been able to rely on national representation.
The roles of the official representatives, whose appointment is the responsibility of the High Representative, assume great relevance and topicality. Nonetheless, as stated in the report, Parliament is calling for greater powers of ballot and control over the roles and the mandates of individual representatives, upholding the principles of transparency and merit that must guide the High Representative when appointing candidates. It is hoped that we will eventually achieve a situation of double hatting – except in the case of the special representative, whose range of action should be regional – and that we will therefore benefit from economies of scale, making the European Union’s external action more efficient and, at the same time, less costly.
After an initial introductory section on strategy, the report addresses the issue of European foreign policy by theme and geographical area. The European Union must make its presence felt with the international organisations to which it is allied, especially the United Nations, the chief custodian of global security. It must play an important role, not only from the viewpoint of its seat on the Security Council, but also in terms of staff and delegations connecting the two bodies. We call on the Vice-President/High Representative to let Europe fulfil its ambition to become an active, strategic and independent partner of a great ally such as the United States in order to respond to the global challenges of terrorism, finance, and the often fraught relationships with industrial giants such as Russia, China and Japan.
The report continues with a geographical analysis of what we can hope to achieve. In the Balkans, the theme of enlargement is introduced: the report praises the gradual achievement of the stabilisation process in Kosovo, where the European Union is present with the EULEX mission, but efforts must still be made to ensure that accession standards are respected for many countries close to candidacy for accession – Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the chapter concerning cooperation with the East and the Black Sea regions, the report deals with the issue of the European Union’s energy supply security and dependency. In the section on Russia, it calls for a new partnership and cooperation agreement to be signed. As far as the South Caucasus is concerned, the report calls for the territory of Georgia and its ethnic minorities to be left intact, and for conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria to be resolved
Middle East: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the European Union must play a stronger political role in relaunching the peace process following the Council decision of 12 December 2009. Union for the Mediterranean: resolution of the Turkey-Cyprus conflict. Asia: Afghanistan, critical period for the establishment of a new government after the elections; Pakistan’s key role in the fight against terrorism; concern over the violation of fundamental rights in Iran. Africa: positive contribution of the Somali coast defence mission. Latin America: need to create a stable and enduring partnership for relationships between the European Union and Latin America.
I will listen to my fellow Members’ comments with great interest and respond to them at the end."@en1
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