Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-09-Speech-3-016-000"
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"en.20110309.6.3-016-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you, Baroness Ashton, for your words and the brilliant and self-contained manner in which you set out your position, as well as your analysis of the situation in our Southern Neighbourhood and in Libya.
We are facing an enormous challenge. We are experiencing a truly historic change in the political balance of the world, in particular, in our immediate neighbourhood. We have to deal with widely differing developments. We cannot speak of a uniform process. The uniform process is revolution, but it is very specific to each country and very varied between them. It is different in Morocco from in Tunisia, in Algeria from in Egypt, and Libya is a special case which we are discussing intensively. Gaddafi is a criminal. He is a murderer who belongs before an international criminal court. We probably all agree that this man will not escape his punishment one way or another. The best thing would be for the Libyan people to be able to resolve this problem themselves and for them to then do so.
We are faced with a major challenge that requires a clear head. We have to make a choice, including in what we say here. On the one hand, our emotion tells us that this criminal must be stopped, that the fratricide in his own country must be stopped, and that we should not exclude any necessary measures to achieve that, including any military ones. That is what our consciences say to us. On the other hand, however, we all know how international politics works and that a wrong decision in this area can have wide-ranging and long-term consequences.
Of course, it is easy to say that we will intervene quickly, but even the implementation of a no-fly zone requires us to take the decision to put warplanes in the air and destroy the Libyan air force on the ground. These are acts of war, implemented by NATO, which could perhaps solve a problem in Libya only to give rise to a number of problems throughout the wider region.
I therefore advise, urgently, that everything that we do be done within the framework of international law and, specifically, on the basis of a resolution from the United Nations Security Council and – this is the major common denominator – with the involvement of the Arab League and the African Union. We are including this in the resolution, which is a sensible thing to do. If we want to intervene in Libya, the only sensible option for this to happen is on the basis of a resolution of the Security Council and with the involvement of Arab states. It is therefore worth me repeating that we should not exclude anything but we should also not satisfy short-term feelings rashly and with trite words that feel instinctively right but that – and I want to reiterate this – could be dangerous in the long term. That would be dangerous.
In the European Council – and I turn to you, Mr Buzek, at this point, as you will be representing Parliament at the meeting of the European Council over the coming days – the question of whether we need a Marshall Plan for the whole region has been raised. My response would be yes, we do need a kind of Marshall Plan for the whole region. I would like to remind everyone, though, what the Marshall Plan meant for Europe. It meant that George Marshall proposed to the United States of America that a percentage of the total economic output of the United States be devoted to Europe. The results of this are well known – today, it calls itself the European Union, and it has levels of prosperity and democratic development and a peace dividend that this continent has never experienced before.
I would also observe, however, that the same governments that are discussing this will believe even 1% of the total economic output to be too high a price for the European Union. You cannot make these trite demands and then do nothing! If we want stability to be brought to our Southern Neighbourhood, we will have to provide a good deal of funding. This is because there is one thing that the people there need, and that is the prospect of being able to live in peace, democracy and prosperity, in other words, the prospect of also obtaining for themselves what we have. That must be the goal of all the efforts that we undertake over the forthcoming days, weeks and months, including here in the European Parliament. After all, all the fine words and nice resolutions that we adopt together deliver precisely nothing for the people of our Southern Neighbourhood – it is tangible acts that they need. For that reason, the common goal for all of us must be the establishment of a free trade zone aimed at economic parity between North Africa and the European Union."@en1
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