Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-065"
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"en.20001025.3.3-065"2
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". – I should like to express my appreciation for the ambitious and constructive attitude of Parliament which is clearly reflected in the report by Mrs Bonino on the draft regulation, reinforcing the European Union's contribution to the fight against anti-personnel landmines.
As for the applicant countries, we would expect them to support the joint action which I have just referred to. This is not Community
in the strict legal sense of that term, but we will obviously encourage them to do away with mines in their defence, to stop manufacturing mines or trading in them, and to sign and ratify the Mine Ban Treaty.
If I may again follow a point Mr Miranda made earlier, I am particularly keen that we should also look at projects to destroy the existing stockpiles of landmines. It can be difficult environmentally and it is expensive but we should give that some priority in the future.
I should like to draw Parliament's attention to the Slovenia International Trust Fund which, in only two years of operation, has set up a regional mine-action programme with support from the European Union, the United States and a number of other countries, with projects throughout the Balkans. After the events earlier this year in Zaghreb and the more recent events in Belgrade, we must hope that the future of south-east Europe is free of the setting of landmines.
Enhancing coherence between Community and Member States' action, to which the honourable Member referred, is at the very heart of the communication which accompanies the draft regulation. We have adopted a flexible, coordinating approach rather than a rigid, centralising one. Mine action is most effective when it is tailored to the conditions which are specific to each situation. That is why we do not propose to pool all mine action, even within the Community framework, in a single programme and a single budget line. Instead, we are proposing to set up an expert group with participation from Member States, from non-governmental organisations and from the other relevant players. The intention is that this group should assist the Commission in drawing up an overall strategy for mine actions.
Turning now specifically to the Bonino report, I would like to comment briefly on the very few amendments by Parliament which the Commission has some difficulty in taking on board in their current form. Some of them I have already touched on in my reply to the honourable Member. Firstly, as I have already mentioned, I think it would be a mistake, well-intentioned but nevertheless counter-productive, to make accession to the Ottawa Convention a hard and fast condition for European mine-action assistance. It goes without saying that we will only rarely agree to give assistance to countries which have not signed up to the Convention. But there are bound to be cases where, for political or humanitarian reasons, we wish to assist populations, despite their governments. So I would argue against Amendment No 18.
While I understand and respect the ambition behind the proposal to concentrate all funds for mine action under the horizontal budget line, with the exception of ECHO and research lines, I am not convinced that this gives us the necessary flexibility to maximise the effectiveness of European Union interventions. It may be that over time the horizontal line will attract more attention and more appreciation, but we also need to maintain the link to broader national or regional programming through the geographic budget lines and regulations. I myself would say no to proposed Amendments Nos 3, 16 and 21.
For the same reason I am confident that the human and administrative resources requested for the central mine action policy team are sufficient to guarantee the proper implementation of the regulation. We do not want to add new layers to our bureaucracy; a small team and proper networking can achieve the same results. I would propose to say no to Amendment No 17.
Similarly, we do not want to create another committee, be it management or advisory. Parliament knows that there are far too many of them already and as the House knows, under our proposals for the reform of EC external assistance, we hope to move away from the heavy handed scrutiny of individual projects and instead focus our discussion with Member States on overall strategies and programming. It is what we are agreeing to do on MEDA, for example. This will be done in the various existing geographic committees. Instead of adding another one to the list, we propose the creation of an expert group which will give us a forum going beyond government experts where we can discuss and where we can define overall mine-action strategy to be applied horizontally and to be reviewed every year. Therefore the Commission cannot accept Amendments Nos 8, 22, 23, 25 and 29.
Finally, on the contracting of mine-action projects, I would caution against the introduction of stricter limitations to the participation in our tenders. As well as pursuing local capacity-building and ownership, we must be able to draw on the best existing expertise and material wherever it is available. In most cases that will be within the European Union, but we may exceptionally have to turn elsewhere. I cannot accept Amendment No 19.
I will not go through all the many amendments proposed by the honourable Member, which the Commission can readily accept and which will in my judgment significantly improve the draft regulation. These only confirm the sense of purpose and ambition which we all share.
It is no surprise that a report by Mrs Bonino is such a powerful and important document. I am grateful but not surprised by the tone of the report. After all, the European Parliament took the lead in the Union in the fight against landmines. It was Parliament which first raised, in 1996, the issue of a horizontal budget line and of a proper legal base to provide a single platform for the wide range of actions that we undertake in this important field.
We have a lot of work still to do if we are to achieve the objectives of the Ottawa Convention to eradicate these mines within the next decade. The adoption of this regulation constitutes a small, but in my judgment an important step along that road. I hope that we can rely on the continued support of Parliament for the successful outcome of the legislative process.
Parliament was instrumental in galvanising the Union into taking a proactive role at the Ottawa Conference in 1997, which led to the conclusion of the Convention to ban and eradicate landmines. It is the challenge of implementing that Convention to the full which led the Commission to reflect on how to reinforce the contribution of the European Union to the battle against landmines. The result of that reflection is before you in the form of a proposal for a regulation.
I should also like to mention the key role played by civil society, by highly motivated non-governmental organisations and, in particular, by the international campaign to ban landmines. Their efforts are essential for the successful implementation of the Convention and their pressure on governments around the world has contributed tremendously to the encouraging record of ratification and accession.
Over the last eight years we have contributed over EUR 200 million from the Community budget to the fight against landmines. In 1999 alone the Union spent more than EUR 100 million of which EUR 30 million was for Community projects, far more than any other international player. Some Members of the House may have seen the brochure that we prepared for the Ottawa Convention review conference last month, which shows the breadth of the interventions that we are making, covering every corner of the world and every aspect of mine action. I particularly commend the work of the Joint Research Centre.
Being the largest contributor to this cause is not enough. The objective of the draft regulation is to allow us to define a strategic, overall approach and to measure our efforts against well-defined targets on the road to our common final objective of a world free of landmines.
Before I comment on the excellent report before us on the draft regulation I should like to make a few general remarks in reply to the interesting and valuable speeches made by Mr Miranda and Mr Brok.
Of course we share the objective of universalisation of the Ottawa Convention. The European Union has a clear position, set out in the 1997 joint action on extending signature and ratification of the Ottawa Convention to as many countries as possible. But I cannot hide this fact: the Union's powers of persuasion in seeking to achieve this goal are obviously somewhat limited by the remaining difficulties of some Member States in signing and ratifying the Convention. This is, to follow the speech of the honourable Member, a point which we put with some regularity to those Member States.
Clearly, the granting of European Union mine-action support can work as an important lever to get potential beneficiary countries to sign up to the Convention. The communication and the draft regulation provide for a degree of conditionality in this respect, but we should not be too dogmatic. We have to acknowledge the specific situation in certain countries. We should not penalise people who need our help, even if their governments are not yet sufficiently committed to the implementation of the Convention. It is the usual dilemma that we face. It is a dilemma which the honourable Member has expressed with considerable eloquence in the past: the challenge we have again and again of providing humanitarian assistance is people where the humanitarian assistance is very often needed as a result of the actions of their governments. But we cannot penalise people when they have a lousy government."@en1
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