Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-10-Speech-2-198"
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"en.20050510.23.2-198"2
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".
Mr President, whilst the world has focused on weapons of mass destruction, it is right that we look today at the 650 million small arms and light weapons in circulation worldwide. Almost one person every minute is killed by the bullet from a gun and two million children have been killed in the last decade.
These arms escalate and provoke prolonged conflicts. They facilitate violent crime and they are used for terrorism. It is in Europe’s interest to limit small arms for our own security, to protect foreign investment and to promote development. That means integrating small arms into Europe’s security development and governance programmes. It is not simply a question of supporting ad hoc disarmament, demobilisation and reconstruction programmes as part of our crisis management response, we have to mainstream this into broader development assistance programmes and include it in our political dialogue with all other countries and regions worldwide.
As a follow-up to the EU security strategy, it means developing a comprehensive EU disarmament and arms control strategy. This should integrate with civil society initiatives, just as NGOs should be able to contribute actively to the UN biannual meeting of states in July.
It means, as we say in the resolution, new impetus for the UN consultations on combating illicit brokering. Here in the EU, our Member States have only to consider applying these controls to our citizens operating outside of the European Union. Yet these brokers deliberately travel overseas to ply their trade. I would have liked, this afternoon, to have heard a commitment from the Luxembourg presidency to strengthen the common position to make it mandatory to control EU nationals involved in arms brokering, wherever they are based.
Finally, it means limiting the supply of arms overall. Action by the EU to control the proliferation of small arms in fragile states is undermined by our role as major arms exporters. Good as the EU code of conduct is, strengthened as it must be, German armaments used in Burma arrive there only because they were exported via Ukraine, which is not bound by our EU rules. It shows why regional agreements alone are not enough. That is why I welcome the commitment from my own government in the United Kingdom and from the Finnish Government, as well as the recommendation of the High Level Panel of the United Nations to champion an international arms trade treaty. Arms transfers must be subject to legal controls, not just in the EU, but across the world."@en1
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