Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-14-Speech-3-172"
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"en.20010314.5.3-172"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I will try to answer some of the concrete questions addressed to the Council as briefly as possible.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne addresses the issue of organised crime as a significant cause of conflicts and wonders whether the Council has tried addressing the problem of organised crime in its work on conflict prevention.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov are travelling to Stockholm next week for a meeting with Heads of State and Government along with foreign ministers in conjunction with the European Council. One of the main points of the meeting will be to continue discussions on how we can work with the Russian Government on the on-going fight against organised crime, which can unfortunately be found in many parts of Russia and which constitutes a cause of many of the conflicts we see around Russia’s borderlands. I can therefore promise Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne that the presidency is actively trying to combat organised crime.
Mrs Lalumière addresses an issue which is key to all work on conflict prevention, i.e. how the Union can achieve a greater consensus on foreign policy matters. Such a consensus is necessary if we are to be able to operate effectively in our work on conflict prevention.
It is the hope of the Council that the common strategies in particular that we have developed for a number of areas of conflict will help to develop such a consensus. The common strategies have not always worked in the way that the Council and others had hoped. In its meeting in January this year, the Council (General Affairs) approved conclusions, based on a report from the EU High Representative, Dr Javier Solana, containing an undertaking to try to refine this instrument, improve it and make it more concrete. I hope that this will prove an effective means of achieving what Mrs Lalumière is calling for. I share the honourable Member’s view fully.
In this context, I would also like to refer to Mrs Kinnock’s question on the extent to which more common strategies should be developed for other areas, of which several were mentioned. The general opinion of the Council is that we must start by ensuring that the instrument of common strategies is more effective, before we move on to investigating whether it can be expanded to cover other areas of conflict. However, we note the proposals and will naturally bear them in mind in our on-going deliberations.
Finally, Mr Rocard asks a number of relevant questions and asks for concrete reactions to the way the Commission has been strengthened in its work on conflict prevention. I will hand you over to Commissioner Patten to answer this question in more detail.
However, let me point out that one of the primary reasons for the presidency prioritising the development of a programme of measures to prevent conflict is that we see a need within the Union to pool our resources in order to improve efficiency in the area of conflict prevention.
In this work, we will look at the decisions already taken and the embryonic state of the organisational structure in various areas. Hopefully, we will be able to draw up a common effective programme which makes the Union even better equipped to prevent conflicts around the world."@en1
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