Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-209"
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"en.20080903.23.3-209"2
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Mr President, President-in-office of the Council, Mrs Flautre, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission was interested to read the report on the application of sanctions and on the evaluation of sanctions in the area of human rights. Sanctions are one of the European Union’s most effective instruments for promoting respect for human rights in third countries, and they have been applied for this purpose notably in Belarus, China, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, the former Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe, to mention only a few of the more important examples.
The Commission is pleased that this debate is being held on the implementation and evaluation of this important instrument for the common foreign and security policy. As the President said – while fully aware that the policy has a number of objectives – any decision to apply sanctions under the CFSP must be taken after evaluating and weighing up a number of objective interests. That is why an evaluation of the consistency of the sanctions policy must be conducted, not only to look at third countries’ human rights records but also to take account of the other objectives and criteria of the CFSP.
The systematic, unilateral and, you could say automatic application of sanctions against any country whose politicians do not fully respect human rights does not seem desirable. The European Union has to take account of the impact on relations with countries that are the target of sanctions, since sanctions are economic as much as political. Nevertheless, we need not only to take account of the impact on our diplomatic relations but also to evaluate the impact on the international activities of our economic operators. Generally speaking, sanctions must be targeted and affect only the leaders of the countries concerned, sparing populations already suffering as a result of failure to respect human rights. Furthermore, when sanctions are agreed, we also need to decide the benchmarks that will be used to lift them
the ‘exit strategy’
while retaining a small amount of flexibility for cases where the third countries concerned fulfil most of the benchmarks but not all.
I am also keen to point out that the purpose of sanctions is not to replace judicial proceedings against those responsible for human rights violations. These crimes fall within the competence of the courts, including the International Criminal Court. However, sanctions do aim to achieve policy changes within a third country, for example to promote respect for human rights in the legal system of the country concerned. They therefore pursue an objective of change and may be lifted when the policies of the country concerned change. For example, the European Union applied sanctions on the former Yugoslavia in support of the International Criminal Court.
We believe it is important to promote respect for human rights in third countries and we keep a constant watch on what is applied in third countries. In each case, it would be necessary to identify from among all the possible instruments, those that will naturally be most effective. An in-depth analysis of the application of sanctions to promote policies that respect human rights consequently seems to us a worthwhile policy and I would therefore like to thank you, Mrs Flautre, for having taken the initiative."@en1
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