Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-06-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20060906.4.3-014"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Lagendijk, our rapporteur, for raising this very timely question.
It is true that we came away from Pristina in June pretty concerned about the EU’s capacity to take on its future enhanced role in Kosovo and to see it through, because if we look at another territory where the international community took on state-building and reconstruction responsibilities – i.e. Afghanistan – we see incipient failure. We need to learn from this experience that the commitment needs to be full, well-planned and consistent and not half-hearted and under-funded. Even more so in the future, Kosovo will be an expensive commitment for the EU, but the alternative of chaos, ethnic conflict and crime is even more expensive. We must treat Kosovo as the future EU member that it is.
The second lesson – and we hardly need to learn it from Afghanistan or Iraq, because it is so obvious – is: ‘it’s the economy, stupid!’ The most important challenge in Kosovo is the massive unemployment. Obviously, status, constitutional issues and administrative capacity have to be sorted out and the security and policing challenges are acute. However, social and economic development is the vital key to peace and coexistence. In this context, education, agricultural development, visa facilitation or, ideally, liberalisation, must be at the top of the agenda. It is important to show Serbs and other minorities, as well as Kosovar Albanians, that they will be better off in the future.
In that connection, I should like to mention an idea. It is not an original idea, but one borrowed from others, who have suggested creating an international university in Mitrovica along the lines of the South-East European University in Tetovo. This is an excellent idea and I hope that we can find some rich donor who might be able to take it forward in what are likely to be the two municipalities of the town. That could instigate economic development in the north of Kosovo.
My final point, very briefly, is that there have been concerns in the context of extraordinary rendition. The former Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Gil-Robles, said that some time in around 2002 or 2003 he saw detainees – prisoners – in Guantánamo-type orange jumpsuits, apparently detained by KFOR, but was not able to pursue the matter. Indeed, the Council of Europe Committee on Torture has not been allowed access to prisoners in Kosovo. This is unacceptable when a territory is under the stewardship of an international community that purports to uphold human rights. I hope that in future the EU will ensure that there is no doubt about Kosovo’s compliance with international humanitarian and human rights law."@en1
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