Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-12-Speech-3-230"
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"en.20011212.7.3-230"2
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"Mr President, the PSE Group sets great store by the debate on the EU’s role in the field of conflict prevention, and we greatly appreciate the efforts the European Commission has made in this connection, and also, of course, the excellent report by Mr Lagendijk. This is an important topic, and it is certainly not only a Dutch pastime, even if we perhaps give this impression a little bit with the list of speakers, the first four of which accidentally, very accidentally, happen to hail from that country.
The European Union is the perfect organisation to play a greater role in preventing conflicts, resolving these or in the subsequent reconstruction. The Community is the manifestation of a broad security concept based on economic and political cooperation and on shared values. This successful model is about to be exported to Central and Eastern Europe, Cyprus, and Malta, of course. Activities are under way in the Balkans with the same intention, and the EU is now facing the task of finding itself a useful role in the reconstruction in Afghanistan.
In my view, all these actions fall under the umbrella of conflict prevention. Despite this, one can still claim that there is already a culture of conflict prevention within the European Union. There is sometimes still envy with regard to NATO or the military scope of the United States, as if the European Union would need to emulate this position. The military instrument is only one of a whole set of instruments which can be deployed to secure safety. It is used as a last resort. The aim of conflict prevention is to prevent violence or recurrence thereof by intervening in good time, mainly by using civil instruments. If conflict prevention is to become an effective instrument of EU security policy, it must form an integral part of our thoughts and actions. This will force the European Union, more often than is now the case, to anticipate and trace hotbeds of conflict in good time. It also forces the European Union to develop new instruments, such as rapid reaction facilities, and to considerably improve the three pillars. It is easy to think of an example where an effective operation requires instruments from all three pillars. At the moment, this is still often a bureaucratic and institutional nightmare to contend with.
The European Union acquires its strength from the multitude of instruments either available or yet to be developed, including, in a few years’ time, the military instrument. In order to deploy these effectively for the short or longer term, a kind of conflict prevention centre is needed. What is happening where and what are we going to do about it? But ultimately it is also about political will. The European Union is active in many, more or less, unstable areas and regions where the level of conflict is mounting, and the European Union should visibly emphasise its conflict prevention policy, more than is now the case, and report on it regularly. Its ambition should be to play an equally visible role as NATO but then in the field of conflict prevention and the deployment of civil instruments. I believe that most EU citizens would be very proud of such a role."@en1
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