Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-19-Speech-3-254"
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"en.20081119.20.3-254"2
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Mr President, honourable Members, Mrs Beer, Mrs Gomes, Mrs Neyts-Uyttebroeck, whom I thank personally for her kind wishes, Mrs Morgantini, Mr Kristovskis and Mr Zappalà, you are all profoundly correct: as Mr Zappalà said, it is a question of civilisation and humanity.
All Member States of the European Union share the humanitarian concerns raised by cluster munitions. The European Union supports the adoption of an international instrument prohibiting cluster munitions, which cause unacceptable harm to civilian populations. It was for this reason that all the Member States of the European Union attended the conference in Dublin, either as stakeholders – like the large majority of Member States – or as observers. It is, of course, the European Union that is the stakeholder; that is what one must understand from this rather complicated phrase.
With regard to the decision to sign or ratify, this is a sovereign decision that falls upon each Member State, but like Mrs Neyts-Uyttebroeck, I regret that they will not all have signed by this December.
The vast majority of Member States of the Union have announced their intention to sign the convention in the coming weeks, I would like to point this out and say that Mrs Morgantini is right; we need to take practical steps before the convention enters into force. In this spirit, France, the country that I know the best, decided, in May 2008, to withdraw from service 90% of its stock of cluster munitions, without delay.
As you know, however, a number of Member States have yet to take such a decision. As far as the French Presidency is concerned, it announced in May, following the Dublin Conference, that it will sign the convention in early December. The Presidency wishes to draw the attention of all Members to the on-going negotiations on cluster munitions within the context of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) which is the only convention that the largest military powers – the United States, Russia, China and India, or countries such as Georgia – agree to participate in, which is not the case for the Oslo convention. I would point out that these countries have not expressed an intention to sign this convention.
All Member States of the European Union are party to this convention and are calling for the adoption of a protocol on cluster munitions. It is also through commitments made in this arena, and Mr Kristovskis is entirely right to emphasise this, that it will be possible to achieve changes on the ground. Furthermore, the deaths caused by cluster munitions, such as we have seen in Georgia, could be avoided in the future if the negotiations taken within the framework of this universal convention are successful.
Honourable Members, as you can see, cluster munitions are an issue that presses the European Union to act, and it must continue to press at an international level for the adoption of a universal instrument. It is, in any case, with this aim in mind that the French Presidency is going to great lengths to convince all its partners, and will continue to do so."@en1
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