Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-05-11-Speech-3-011-000"
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"en.20110511.4.3-011-000"2
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"Mr President, in a European Union where we are seeing moves towards renationalisation in all areas, the Treaty of Lisbon should be used as a tool for creating a new community policy: the common foreign, security and defence policy.
You, on the other hand, are the diplomatic representative of an entire continent.
This is the first important general debate which we have held with Baroness Ashton and, if we look back to the early days, it was already clear then that there were certain governments which did not want the title of ‘Foreign Minister of the European Union’ to be used and this has ultimately led to the name of ‘High Representative’ being chosen. This is understandable, because, alongside tax policy and domestic policy, an independent foreign policy is one of the key features, you might almost say an identifying feature, of national sovereignty. Particularly in the field of foreign, security and defence policy, transferring this sovereignty to a supranational institution is a brave and also a difficult move.
However, we in the European Parliament, together with the High Representative, need to ask a quite different question. This question is: What is the role of the Union as an independent body in international policy? Over the last few days, I have read articles about Baroness Ashton which have astonished me, because they criticise her absence and her lack of policies. This criticism comes from people who think only about making their own national foreign policy and their own national interests the very top priority and who, without consulting with any of their partners, take unilateral decisions which will ultimately divide Europe rather than unifying it.
We only need to look at the mission in Libya. There has rarely been a more obvious split in the European Union’s international policy and in its international involvement than over the question of how we behave towards Libya. There is a tendency in the major capitals of the European Union to regard the EU’s foreign, security and defence policy as a continuation of each country’s own national policy financed with European money. The larger the
the Foreign Office or the Quai d’Orsay, the more pronounced this tendency is. Baroness Ashton, you will undoubtedly receive broad support from Parliament if you say to these people that, although you respect their unilateral interests, the common European foreign policy cannot take the same direction. This policy will be defined by you, the High Representative, in all the areas of consensus.
I am in favour of opening an office of the kind you have described in Libya, because you as High Representative, the Union itself, and Parliament as an independent body, all have credibility in humanitarian and political terms. We are more credible than the states which have taken military action in Libya out of necessity, but whose arms exporters also had the largest trade stands at Libya’s most important arms fair last autumn. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Belgium are the main suppliers of arms to Colonel Gaddafi’s army which is fighting the rebels in Libya. That is not the sort of credibility which Europe needs.
The credibility which Europe needs is that of soft power, which helps to establish democracy, which opens an office to support developments in civil society and which does not define international cooperation with the European Union in terms of subjugating others to the unilateral diplomatic and economic interests of the Union, but instead encourages policies based on an equal partnership between different regions of the world. That is my vision of the foreign, security and defence policy of the European Union.
You have mentioned the three Ms: money, mobility and market access. In the next phase, you should add the three Cs: coherence, concreteness and the community method. In my opinion, with the three Ms and the three Cs, you will find partners in the European Parliament. We in the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament know that we are still in the early stages of the cooperation between you and Parliament and there are certainly some areas for improvement. This is why I am repeating my offer on behalf, I believe, of the majority of the Members of this House. You will undoubtedly find more support for your vision of a common foreign and security policy here than among the 27 foreign ministers, all of whom I respect, but who all have one problem, which is that they are foreign ministers of individual countries."@en1
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"Auswärtige Amt"1
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