The background of our discussion today is well-known. Intrastate conflicts should not be prevented.
Conflicts are natural and necessary both in our personal lives and in the society as a whole.
The result is a stability, which becomes rigid. As such it will not survive, as it contains the seed, which in the end will undermine the stability. The efforts to preserve stability will most likely lead to oppression. The long term consequences will then be frightening and violent, as we have seen in the former Soviet Union and even worse in ex-Yugoslavia. Read from this perspective, the stimulating and valuable communication from the Commission to the Council on the European Union and the conflicts in Africa is launching a concept which can be misleading and therefore dangerous in its function.