Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-18-Speech-4-111"
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"en.20041118.11.4-111"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish firstly, on behalf of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, to express my delight in the decisions taken by the Security Council this week, particularly concerning the arms embargo, on condition however that this embargo is genuinely respected and that arms sales can be controlled much more effectively, as is also emphasised in the report presented by our colleague, Mr Romeva i Rueda. If, however, it is indeed a question of reacting firmly to the violence being committed in Côte d'Ivoire, we also have to take much longer-term action, and not only when the situation becomes untenable.
That is why we think we need far-reaching reforms not only of France’s, but also of the European Union’s, policies on Africa. The reforms should relate, in particular, to issues of sustainable economic development in the foreign policy we conduct with regard to these countries. In the case of Côte d'Ivoire, it must, even so, be emphasised that the falls in the cost of raw materials and of cocoa have plunged a large portion of the population into extreme poverty, which is helping to destabilise the country still more.
The European Union has also very recently renewed its fishing agreement with Côte d'Ivoire, which poses huge problems at a time when Côte d'Ivoire is in a state of civil war and there is no means of monitoring these fishing agreements. There are also the structural adjustment policies which have hugely destabilised the education and health systems and the public services. In short, all these policies – economic, commercial and financial – also play a considerable role in the political situation in these countries, a fact that obviously does not in any way detract from the responsibility of the African and Côte d'Ivoire politicians themselves. We most certainly need, however, to take long-term action to link these policies.
Indeed, we cannot, on the one hand, advocate the development of armed forces in the North – albeit in the good cause of disarming forces to whom, incidentally, we have previously sold arms – and, on the other hand, help thrust whole populations into extreme poverty by means of inequitable and destructive financial and commercial policies, thereby making it that much more difficult to establish a democratic state governed by the rule of law.
We therefore want to see the European Union steer a totally different course regarding Côte d'Ivoire and all the African countries so that all these aspects might be reconciled and so that we are not content merely to react – react though we must – to extremely difficult crises."@en1
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