Debate: Implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy - annual report  - Implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy - annual report  - Human Rights and Democracy in the World and the EU policy on the matter - annual report
Date: TUESDAY, 19 JANUARY 2021
Speaker: Josep Borrell Fontelles
Language: EN

First, all reports stress that this year – 2020 – the pandemic has accelerated political trends and revealed a weakness in global governance and also in European governance. Facing the COVID—19 challenge has been very challenging, but I think we can be proud that we not only stuck together but grew together, and now our bloc is a more cohesive one. We have been fighting for multilateralism – the rules—based order for global solidarity – as the only sustainable way out of the crisis, when others have been pushing to narrow nationalist agendas. I hope in 2021 multilateral cooperation will make a strong comeback and, at the same time, I hope that we will pursue our open strategic autonomy and apply the concept in concrete ways, to stop discussing about theology and going to practicalities. In everything we do, we will continue to defend our values of freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, as your reports have underlined. I cannot agree more on that. On the geographical front – you will understand it is impossible to cover everything; let’s go to the telegraphic style: USA, transatlantic partnership, we have been talking a lot about it; ask tomorrow. The Biden administration, I hope, will be finishing with governing by tweeting and offering another approach and to try to make multilateralism great again. It will require closer cooperation between the EU and the US, at least on three areas: climate change, Iran nuclear deal, and regulating big technological platforms, among others. And Latin America, we have just talked about it. Africa remains a top priority for us. COVID shapes our agenda. We had to postpone the African Union summit: we are still waiting for it. We have been supporting Africa. We need to do more together. Debt relief initiative, very much important. Our relationship with Africa is such a strategic one that we should invest much more on getting an equal partnership. When you see the demographic imbalance between Africa and Europe, one has to ask every day that we should engage more with them, otherwise we will pay the price. On Asia, we have to work with like—minded partners. We have upgraded our relation with ASEAN to the level of a strategic partnership, and we are proud of it – I think it’s a good achievement. We overcame the difficulties related with palm oil, and now we are on the way to becoming a strategic partner with these countries. This is going to give us a solid basis to improve our influence in a region where there is a growing demand for a growing EU presence. China: maintain both a principled and pragmatic approach. We have signed a comprehensive agreement on investment. It shows our effort to address economic imbalances and improve our access to the Chinese market. I’m sure there will be a very lively debate in this Parliament about this agreement. But keep in mind, you have to engage with China. We cannot expect China to stop being China before engaging with China on challenges such as climate, Covid and debt relief. No one can talk about debt relief today in the world without taking into account the fact that China has become the biggest creditor of the emerging countries. And at the same time we must stay firm on defending human rights in Hong Kong: that’s clear. On the wider neighbourhood – Western Balkans, Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Sahel – there, Belarus has been remaining the most important actor on our agenda. Russia and Turkey, you make a particular mention of these countries: yes, they play a key and often complicated role – we have been talking about that with respect to Russia. Tomorrow I will have a long meeting with the Foreign Affairs Minister of Turkey. We are going to engage on trying to look for a better understanding. The leaders of the European Union Council send a clear signal of willingness to engage with Turkey on a better neighbourhood but, as with the tango, you need to be two to be good neighbours. We will try. And it seems that the ambiance is much better than in the last summer. Let’s hope that my meeting with Minister Çavuşoğlu will be at least longer than the one I had in Malta during the month of August, which lasted no more than one hour. So let’s see if we can change the dynamics. I’m sure we will. UK: the new trade and cooperation agreement to be ratified by this House will provide the basis for a new start, and then we’ll have to deal with our friends and neighbours as a third country to the European Union. Let’s go to the horizontal issues, or let’s go to the issues that go beyond the geographical approaches. The first one is disinformation. More and more, disinformation plays a crucial role. Disinformation has always existed. In Spain, before we talked about fake news we were saying  I would like to stress the importance of the StratCom in the European External Action Service to fight disinformation and the support that this Parliament has given to the StratCom services. I think that in cooperation with Member States, we have to do more and to counter any threat, especially to the elections interference. On security and defence: I would like to commend our colleagues in our 17 missions and operations for delivering on their mandates in this difficult situation. I also appreciate a lot your support. You have helped navigate this common foreign and security policy budget to a safe harbour during 2020 as well as the multiannual financial framework. Particularly important is the political agreement reached on the European Peace Facility: 5 billions, 7 years, for sure it will make our CFDP more effective and respond better to our partners’ needs. Operation Irini deserves a special mention. It has made an important contribution to improving security in the Mediterranean. And Atalanta? And if we want to be a global maritime security actor or provider, we have to expand the mandate of Atalanta and to introduce this idea of the coordinated maritime presences. Member States always have a warship somewhere. Not all of them at the same time in the same place, but look at any geographical position and you will find that, a certain amount of the time, there are some warships from some Member States. Why don’t we coordinate their presence and make all of them together an EU presence through coordinating the presences of the Member States? We are going to launch our first pilot initiative in the Gulf of Guinea next week. Also, we launch a new civilian mission in the Central African Republic, a country in a very difficult situation, complementing the existing military mission. Our partnership in nature remains strong, but we need to strengthen our role in security and defence. It is not one thing or the other; it is not one thing against the other; it is not more of one and less of the other – they are complementarities. And now we are building on a threat analysis conducted for the first time at European Union level: the so—called Strategic Compass. And I think this is going to be very important to define which are the challenges that we are going to face in all critical domains. I think that this is complementary also of other reports, like the first strategic review of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) that has been focusing on how the Member States have been fulfilling their commitment. There are 26 out of 46 PESCO projects that will deliver results by 2025, but I think that the PESCO project has to be much more operational: less focusing on capabilities and more on operability. Finally, the area of human rights. I think there is one achievement that I have to mention: the EU global human rights sanctions regime. Your support was vital. Remember that we launched this initiative in December 2019 in the first foreign affairs meeting that I had the honour to chair, and now I am expecting the first proposal for listing to come from Member States. It is a tool and it has to be used. If you keep the tool in the toolbox, it is useless, so let’s wait and see if the Member States have the will, once they agreed in the Council by unanimity to use it. In tangible terms, through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, we have supported nearly 45 000 human rights defenders in the last five years. Well, this is a figure to take into consideration. When people say: what are you doing? What do you do?, please give this kind of answers. We have been supporting financially 45 000 human rights defenders during the last five years, and we remain particularly committed to women’s and girls’ human rights, as reflected in our Gender Action Plan. Dear Members, I would like to talk a lot about other things in our foreign and security policies. We have to work more on the security side of this policy; we have to work more in order to make human rights taken seriously by third countries. And there are also some successes – we should not be hiding our successes, we should be proud of what we have achieved. Mongolia and Pakistan agreed to conduct a child labour survey; in Sri Lanka child labour has been down from 16% to 1%, through the pioneering child labour—free zones. In Bolivia the minimum age to work has been raised to 14 years. Fourteen is still too low for us, for our standards – it is still too low, but it was even lower. Through the implementation of the third Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy, we will increase our resilience even more. We have approved the European Democracy Action Plan. We have a lot of plans and a lot of strategies, but the important thing is at the end, how do you implement it? You should be more attentive to the implementation than to the drafting. The important thing is action. Yes, I know we have to have a plan, have to have a strategy, but this is just a starting point. What really matters is what comes later. And a funny thing; people, the media, even the parliamentarians pay more attention to the plans than to the implementation of the plans. And I think it would be much better to have the debate not about the plans but about how they have been implemented, because these are the real things that matter. Thank you for your work, and especially to the ones who have been participating as chief observer on electoral observation missions. The last three were Guyana, Peru and Ghana. I’m sorry, this year has been a very meagre year from the point of view of electoral observation missions – it’s one of the effects of the virus, sorry. I know that the parliamentarians are very much involved in that and are eager to participate in these missions – it is an important part of our external action. I hope that we will be able to do more in 2021, even if the prospects for the time being are quite dire. We have done a lot, and for sure, we will do more. This year will be a year of recovery, hope and delivery. We have demonstrated the added value of the European Union in 2020. I think the Union is more cohesive. It is much more difficult to doubt about the utility of the European Union after the pandemic because of the answer of the European Union. And if you compare with the answer that we gave to the euro crisis is still more, has been impressive, both internally and externally, be it on the pandemic or in the wider set of challenges that we are facing. So, many thanks to all of you. I am now listening to your comments in order to learn from what and how we can improve our work.