COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC Treaty concerning the common position of the Council on the amended proposal of regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on action against antipersonnel Landmines: reinforcing the contribution of the European Union, 2000/0062/A/COD

1- BACKGROUND

Date of transmission of the proposal to the EP and the Council (document COM(2000) 111 final - 2000/0062/A/COD): 16.03.2000

Date of the opinion of the European Parliament, first reading: 25.10.2000

Date of transmission of the amended proposal to the Council 20.12.2000

Date of adoption of the common position: 31.05.2001

2- OBJECTIVE OF THE COMMISSION PROPOSAL

This proposal has both technical and political purposes. It specifically aims to reinforce Community's mine actions, in order to ensure complementarity and consistency between Community horizontal and country specific policies. It furthermore aims to reinforce the overall efficiency of mine action and, by so doing, helps to remove the scourge of landmines within the terms provided for by the Ottawa Convention.

Technical purposes :

* Overcome the lack of a legal basis for budget line B7-661, created by the EP in 1996.

* Overcome the multitude of financial instruments currently used in support of mine actions which made difficult to establish a focused approach and which prevented the definition of a Community overall and coherent strategy.

Political purposes:

* Obligations under Ottawa Convention (entered into force 1st of March 1999) requiring increased efforts in terms of co-ordination, coherence, efficiency and funding.

* The internal (EU) requirement of addressing the APL problem under a comprehensive EU mine action framework, linked to priorities of external relations policy including security related aspects.

3- COMMENTS ON THE COMMON POSITION

3.1 There are good reasons to be satisfied of the results reached with this common position:

3.1.1- Duration: The duration of this Regulation is not limited to the date of expiry of the current Financial Perspective, 2006. The strength of the political message is preserved: this Regulation will expire in 2009 which is the date fixed by the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty for compliance with its targets.

3.1.2- Stockpiles: The request of the EP to explicitly mention in the legal text the need to destroy stockpiles has been satisfied. Destruction of Landmines is of course strictly related to the de-pollution of land in mine-afflicted countries. APL cannot always and exclusively be destroyed upon detection. We must therefore ensure that the release of safe land to victim populations is not threatened by further replanting of APL originating from stocks. Furthermore, the cost-effectiveness of stockpile destruction compared to full cycle operation of detection and clearance of planted mines is 10 to 1. Reduction of mine-damage in developing countries can thus be exponentially accelerated.

3.1.3- UXO: Unexploded ordnance has been kept within the scope of the Regulation. This is a very important element of mine clearance activities and one on which the mine-clearance community is very keen on.

3.1.4- Budget: The annual average amount of 16,5 m EUR for the budget line dedicated to this Regulation provides a good level of certainty and operational thrust to the EC policy. The overall financial envelope of 240 m EUR indicated as total Community contribution to the fight against Landmines for the duration of the Regulation is a further encouraging signal of the political will behind this Regulation.

3.1.4-1. Budget is not split along the two Regulations covering two distinct geographic areas but provides for a total amount common to both instruments. This flexibility is essential to address changing needs of intervention.

3.1.5- Complementarity with other Regulations and programmes: The co-existence of other budget lines to support mine actions has been accepted. This will reinforce the interaction with Country Strategies and the overall consistency of Community instruments.

3.1.6- Comitology and Thresholds: No new Committee has been created. Existing committees will deal with projects of geographical relevance. Projects up to 3 m EUR can be decided without Comitology procedure. This implies a practical shift of Committees' agenda towards Strategy Papers rather then projects. Strategy papers will be submitted for consideration to ad hoc joint committees as well as to the European Parliament.

3.1.7- Untied assistance: Beneficiaries of aid include, in exceptional cases, non-beneficiary third countries. This will make possible to resort to specific and advanced technologies and know-how while promoting interesting transfers to the benefit of EU and beneficiary countries' operators.

3.2- Situation of the Parliament's Amendments from the first reading.

- A large number of Parliament's Amendments has been integrated into the common position of the Council, although a different language has occasionally been chosen. These are: N°1, 2, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 20, 24, 27, 28, 30.

- The majority of the amendments were integrated into the amended proposal because in line with the spirit of the Draft; these were : N° 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30.

- Main differences between the amended proposal of the Commission and the common position are as follows:

- The mention of supplementary budget aimed to cater for specific Stockpile destruction is omitted since the financial framework amount is calculated to cover overall mine clearance expenditure.

- A financial framework amount is identified as provided for by the Inter-institutional Agreement whenever the duration of programmes based on Co-decision procedures expand beyond ongoing Financial Perspectives.

- A further overall financial framework amount is given, covering mine actions under the Community instruments listed in Art. 2.4. The purpose of this mention is to increase transparency in total and individual commitments, thus indirectly responding to the request expressed by the EP of a concentration of the Community funds under this Regulation, ECHO and R&D, for exactly the same purpose.

- Conditionality of the aid to the commitment to the Ottawa process is referred to under Article 3.

- Urgency procedure has been deleted in favour of a reasonable Comitology threshold of EUR3m, under which emergency interventions can be envisaged and in favour of real time information of the Committees concerned.

- Committees will furthermore be involved in the discussions of multi-annual strategy papers and so will the EP.

- The Regulation shall apply until December 2009 which is the target date set by the Ottawa Convention to meet the challenge of a mine-free world.

4- CONCLUSION

The Commission accepts the common position because it enables to pursue all objectives of its Communication within the post Evian spirit.

5- DECLARATIONS BY THE COMMISSION

A joint Commission and Council declaration will be noted in the minutes of the Council's decision.

"The Council and the Commission confirm that the adoption of this Regulation will not prevent the European Union from taking action against anti-personnel landmines under Title V of the Treaty on European Union, in so far as such action pursues objectives of the common foreign and security policy and is in conformity with Article 47 of the TEU."