Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-16-Speech-2-268"
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"en.20010116.11.2-268"2
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". – Peace building and conflict prevention, management and resolution continue to have a high priority in our policies, and the Commission welcomes the importance attached to those issues by the Swedish Presidency.
Peace and democratic stability are indispensable preconditions for economic and social progress. Conflict prevention is an integral part of the EU's external policy objectives. The challenge is now to address in concrete terms the root causes of conflicts and to focus on actions and the implementation of policies.
The EU's contribution to conflict prevention is greatest where we can use or adapt our different instruments, especially trade and cooperation agreements, development assistance and social and environmental instruments, to tackle causes of conflict.
The last Development Council, by focusing the objective of development policy on poverty reduction, has laid the basis for addressing one of the major causes of conflict – the widening of disparities in prosperity and poverty.
Let me again repeat that the HIPC initiative alleviating the debt of the poorest countries is also a very real contribution to conflict prevention. Globally, the low level of development assistance is, in my view, the biggest single issue that needs to be addressed if we are to be serious about conflict prevention.
The Commission has already had numerous discussions with the Swedish Presidency and we share their concerns. It was, for example, decided to have a policy debate on conflict prevention in the General Affairs Council on 22 January. We agreed that we needed to incorporate the concept of conflict prevention in existing policy instruments to strengthen cooperation with the United Nations, the OSCE and other regional organisations and to find common approaches to cross-border phenomena of destabilisation such as the trade in narcotics, weapons or diamonds. We really need better instruments in these fields, of course.
The Commission will present a communication on conflict prevention this spring. It is fully aware of the crucial role of development cooperation in this context. We will work closely with the Swedish Presidency to maintain conflict prevention and peacekeeping at the top of our agenda."@en1
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