Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I appreciate the opportunity afforded by today’s debate because the triad of conflict prevention, civil crisis management and military capabilities needs to be seen in a wider context, ensuring of course that conflict prevention and civil crisis management are given a high ranking. All three concepts are interconnected. Credible civil crisis management and prevention are only possible if all sides are aware of the military capabilities. On the other hand, developing our potential for conflict prevention and crisis management will ensure that we never need to use military force. Hence the high ranking. With the resolutions of Cologne, Helsinki and Feira and the conditions created in Nice, we have a clear brief to forge ahead with the civil aspects of crisis management. This includes developing the capacity to plan and implement policing operations, cooperation with the United Nations and questions of coherence and efficient improvement to Union policy in this area. In the meantime, we have seen – and we still see time and again – that the present artificial separation of powers – some of which rest with the Commission and some with the High Representative – is damaging us in the long run and the Council should consider if it would be better in the long term for the vice-president of the Commission to have special relations with the Council and take over these matters, and for this to be used as a springboard for bringing greater transparency to these three areas. The point is, we should really like to know that a check has been run on the extent to which these various capabilities are available in the institutions of the European Union. We need to do something about improving the European Union’s information and analysis capacities. We must be careful not to develop dual structures; instead we must combine the resources of the Council, the Commission, the Member States and other institutions so that we really can benefit from them. I do not intend to go into all the details, but I think that it is immensely important in this context for the Commission to take more of an initiative in these areas and play a central role in planning crisis prevention and crisis management, so that we can create the political awareness needed for all these capabilities to be brought under one roof. We specifically call on the Member States to provide the capacities and resources needed so that the European Union can be quickly deployed in the four areas defined in Feira, although this will depend, among other things, on defining specific objectives in advance, possibly with a timetable, as we did during the discussion on police forces. The example of Kosovo shows just how badly we need these capabilities; it also shows that we can act in a coordinated manner under uniform guidance. Even though the Council, the Commission and the Member States have done a great deal of good over the last two or three years, we still have to admit – more’s the pity – that we are far too backward in coming forward in certain areas and taking on tasks which we need to tackle directly, which is why we feel it is so important that we make progress here. In doing so, we shall certainly need proper coordination with organisations such as the UN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and non-governmental organisations. I need only remind you of the status quo here and the fact that the old principle still applies to Kosovo: now at last we must find the coordinator for the coordinators. A great deal still needs to be done here and I think that, given the problems, especially for individuals, we really must overcome the difficulties, power struggles and vanities between the institutions and develop European capabilities which enable us to foster and contribute to peace and freedom, both within and on the edge of the European Union.

Political group: PPE-DE