Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-17-Speech-3-020"
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"en.19991117.2.3-020"2
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"I am extremely pleased to be taking part for the first time in a debate in the European Parliament with the High Representative. We are all extremely fortunate that he is the man charged with the key responsibility for developing a more effective and coherent European security and defence policy.
So what I want to make clear is that you do not have to strain or stretch your imagination, let alone strain or stretch the Treaties which determine our activities, to see the absolutely clear roles that can be played by the Commission and by Parliament. It is not just in south-east Europe that we have seen the need for coordinated military and civil crisis management both at Union level and between Member States. We can also see that in East Timor. We have to improve our ability as a Union and as Member States to manage crises and to contribute to those international organisations which are also active in this, alas, all too necessary area.
The Helsinki European Council will discuss an integrated approach to conflict management and we are, as a Commission, making a full contribution to that discussion. Let me make a point that some may regard as rather prosaic. In conflict prevention and crisis management, time is of the essence. The new Commission has begun work to try to improve the effectiveness and speed of response of the instruments that we have in crisis situations. That is something which Parliament has frequently requested us to do, and absolutely rightly. It is a big job. In many respects, any progress we make in this area would represent by far the biggest contribution that I could make to our rather more heroic objectives.
I hope that we can count on the continued support of Parliament in developing more flexible and more rapid procedures, and as the High Representative I am sure would readily agree, I lose no opportunity to make the same point to the Council.
The Commission’s role in crisis management is clear, but our role goes beyond crisis management. A European security and defence policy cannot be developed in the absence of a competitive and open European defence industrial and technological base. This is also in the interests of the European Union’s partners. We in the Commission can contribute to this with a range of instruments in areas such as public procurement, the internal market, research and competition.
I want to make one final point. Sometimes people talk about the potential institutional conflicts in the foreign and security tasks which lie ahead. I hope they will not take exception to these remarks but I think that the issues they are talking about are too important to allow them to get mangled by diplomatic lawyers. Plainly, we have to build on the institutional framework of the Union. Plainly, military and non-military matters cannot be neatly compartmentalised. Plainly, the Commission must play its full part in crisis management even when there is a military component, because there will also be a non-military component. Plainly, the new structures must enable the Commission to exercise its full right of initiative. Plainly, the Commission is not a college of amateur chiefs of staff and plainly, we want to work successfully with the High Representative and with Parliament to ensure that Europe has the security and defence policy that it needs and that its citizens want. And if there is another plainly left in the dictionary, it is this: so long as I have my present responsibilities, no cigarette paper, or perhaps after David Byrne’s announcement on tobacco yesterday I should say no piece of tissue paper, is going to separate the Commissioner for External Relations from the High Representative.
He has, as the House will know, a huge and wholly deserved international reputation for standing up for the values which have been responsible for the best of European history in this century and whose absence has been responsible for the worst of our history as well.
The High Representative and I have spent a good deal of our first weeks in our respective jobs considering together the terrestrial problems 30,000 feet below our aircraft seats – so much travel. It reminds me that Lord Grey, the British Foreign Secretary for ten years at the beginning of the century, only ever went abroad once. If my history does not let me down, that visit was shortly followed by the outbreak of the first world war. I suppose Lord Grey was regarded as well-travelled. Perhaps with all the travelling we do these days we are better informed than he was, but perhaps we are not.
I do not wish to repeat all the points which have been so well made by the High Representative, but since you have invited me to take part in this debate, something which I greatly welcome, I should like to say a few words about the Commission’s view of the building of a European security and defence policy.
Security and defence, which are at the heart of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, are also properly and inevitably close to the hearts of Member States. As was clearly apparent at the historic meeting – it is the High Representative’s adjective and the correct one – at the beginning of this week of the General Affairs Council attended by defence ministers, Member States believe that enhanced cooperation in the security and defence area in the European Union will bring two major benefits. First, it will enable everyone to make better use of their resources and, secondly, it will mean that everyone packs a bigger punch precisely because Member States are working more closely together.
These benefits are needed more than ever in the security field because more is expected of Europe today. More is expected of us by the rest of the world because of our economic success and because of our success too in building peaceful and stable democracies. More is expected of us, in my judgement, by our own citizens, who do not think of Europe just in terms of balance sheets and GDP figures. How could they possibly do so given the tumultuous political events of the last few years – tumultuous events ever since an American political scientist told us that history had ended.
The European Union has to rise to the level of events. It is as simple as that and as difficult as that. The Amsterdam Treaty and the Cologne Declaration represent a formidable challenge. But we, in the Commission, want to play our part in helping to meet it. Of course we have no military role. The sight, on Monday evening, of so many military uniforms in the margins of the General Affairs Council came as an interesting cultural development. But what we do have in the Commission is the means and the experience to make an important contribution to the non-military dimension of security. The so-called Petersberg Tasks suggest a comprehensive package of crisis-management measures where Community instruments can interact with traditional diplomacy and, if necessary, the use of military force.
Here we come to a crucial point. Sometimes the military dimension is essential and decisive. But the non-military dimension can also be crucial. After all, the nature of conflict has changed so radically during this bloody century. Eighty-five percent of the victims of the first world war were soldiers. Only 15% were civilians. The situation in conflicts today is almost the opposite. It is equally the case that with the increasing sophistication and interdependence of our societies, economic measures, the free flow of information and so on have become ever more important in conflict and its prevention. So the European Union has to envisage action right across the whole range of instruments at its disposal, both military and non-military.
If you want to know just what we can contribute as a Community, look at the multitude of our operations in the Balkans. We are involved in obvious areas like humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation and reconstruction. But the measures we can take with the aim of preventing conflict and human suffering include many other things as well, like law enforcement, institution-building and trade policy. Those are the sort of things we are supporting in Kosovo, to which we will be pledging at the donors conference in Brussels today another contribution of EUR 500 million from the Community."@en1
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