Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-14-Speech-3-163"
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"en.20010314.5.3-163"2
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"Mr President, my major concern is that the focus of EU action on crisis management is too often – I could say invariably – of a military nature, rather than on the longer-term conflict prevention which my colleagues have spoken about.
I am pleased that the President-in-Office and Commissioner Patten understand the need to put in place measures to anticipate violent conflict and to promote what I would call a culture of prevention. Troop deployment, as we know, is expensive and very prone to failure. Of course, we need to be able to react rapidly, but the EU must improve its ability to use all the economic and political levers at its disposal and use them more effectively to tackle the root causes of tension, which the Commissioner mentioned earlier.
Twenty-four of the world's forty poorest countries are either engaged in some kind of armed conflict or have recently emerged from it. In Africa, 20% of the population live in countries affected by armed conflict. Therefore I have to ask the Commissioner, how it is that the Commission's policy planning and early-warning units, provided for in the Amsterdam Treaty, have 20 members of staff, 11 of whom are engaged in working in Balkans whereas only one is assigned to the world's most conflict-prone region, Africa. I would be very happy if the Commissioner could look into that. Are there plans to have a more balanced approach in the early-warning unit?
Secondly, would the Council and Commission not agree that we need urgently to develop common strategies for west Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region and for southern Africa?
Finally, does the Commission agree that country strategy papers which have been drawn up under the Cotonou Agreement must urgently include an impact study of policies on conflict so that we can be assured that we know what might happen in the 77 countries which are part of the Cotonou Agreement."@en1
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