Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-09-Speech-3-190"
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"en.20070509.19.3-190"2
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substitute; Delegation for relations with the countries of Central America (2007-03-14--2009-07-13)3
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".
Madam President, this report on the strategy of the European Union in Africa, and the EU political partnership in the horn of Africa will be the European Parliament’s response to the European Commission’s communiqué of last November. The purpose of that communiqué was to create a regional political partnership in the Somalian peninsula as the basis for a comprehensive approach to preventing conflict in the region. It is based on the assumption that without lasting peace there can be no development, and without development there can be no lasting peace.
There were two reasons for selecting this region as a test case for EU regional strategy in Africa. The first was the strategic importance of the region for the EU, and the second was the great political complexity of the three main conflicts in the region, which are interlinked; the conflicts in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, where a regional approach is probably the only way of resolving the conflicts. In other words, nothing can be resolved until everything has been resolved.
The strategy proposed by the Commission is based on a comprehensive approach to preventing conflicts in the horn of Africa aiming to tackle the underlying causes of the instability in the short and medium term both at national and at regional level, and to bring about closer regional cooperation. You may, however, justifiably wonder whether this is possible in a region where five out of seven states are in conflict with their neighbours, where each conflict spawns another, where one country has been incapable of functioning normally in the last 15 years, and where an extremely high percentage of the population lives in poverty. Is cooperation through regional partnership the cure to all the ills of such complex and mutually interlinked problems? It is my firm belief that it is worth trying, and that despite certain shortcomings in the Commission’s communiqué, some of which were difficult to avoid, and which we address in the report (an example is greater involvement of MEPs and of the Africans themselves in drawing up the common strategy), we should agree on the four main legs of this strategy, which are that sustainable development is impossible without peace and
that without the effective participation of African regional institutions there can be no lasting peace, that the regional perspective – that is, regional understanding – is necessary to resolve particular local conflicts, and that regional integration initiatives will be successful if they focus on common challenges rather than on a list of present conflicts. Regional integration must concentrate on issues such as water resources, desertification, food security, and not simply on ethnic divisions and conflicts. Furthermore, the European Union has a key role to play by importing its own tried-and-tested model of integration which has effectively brought lasting peace and which, in the context of the present 50th anniversary of the EU, is, in my view, particularly important.
I am clearly aware that both the communiqué of the Commission and the present report of the European Parliament is only the beginning of the process, and that the ultimate aim is to develop a regional strategy for the region. It should also be borne in mind that specific Member States are conducting their own activities in the horn of Africa, and the report is therefore directed not just at the European Commission, but at Member States as well.
The aim of the report is to flesh out the ideas of the Commission’s communiqué, and I would like to stress particularly that it is important to avoid wishful thinking and cobbling together institutions. In my opinion, we should rely on existing initiatives and tested ideas. We need to appoint a special representative of the European Union for the horn of Africa to deal with the major questions that the report raises. This will help avoid duplication, allow deeper analysis and make it possible to pursue minimum political aims in individual countries. We must make full use of dialogue based on Article 8 of the Cotonou Memorandum, cooperation between Parliament and the Commission on creating a common strategy with the involvement of Africa, and searching for African solutions and strengthened African organisations.
I would also like to thank all those who contributed to this report: the MEP from the Committee on Development, the secretariat of the Committee on Development, the shadow rapporteur, the German presidency and the experts and non-governmental organisations with which we were in constant dialogue."@en1
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"vice-versa"1
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