INTRODUCTION

1. The still recent Kosovo conflict and the decision taken by the European Union in its wake to develop an operational military capability have once again focused attention on the military aspects of security. The military element has been the strong point of the Alliance since its creation in 1949, but not its only component. From its inception the Alliance has been a political organisation, bringing together countries that share common values and are determined to protect them from destruction, by military force if needed. This political component of the Alliance has become the hallmark of its activities since the end of the Cold War. NATO's Euro-Atlantic Co‑operation Council (EAPC), individual Partnership for Peace (PfP) programmes, Membership Action Plans (MAP) and South-East Europe Initiative all aim to assist with the transformation of Partners’ armed forces, but they also contribute to the diffusion across Europe of a security culture based on co-operation, dialogue and common efforts to prevent and manage conflicts. Rumours in the Spring of 2001 that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) was planning to join PfP, if confirmed, would be the jewel crowning that strategy.

2. Going one step further, NATO enlargement aims to irrevocably tie to the circle of Western democracies those countries that have expressed the will and demonstrated the capability to defend the values of freedom, the rule of law, and good neighbourly relations. Similarly, NATO’s “investment” in the Balkans through KFOR and SFOR goes much further than the military element. As documented by the report of the Sub-committee on Civilian Security and Co-operation last year, NATO and partner troops have been involved in many missions in support of civilian organisations, whether in the field of humanitarian assistance, infrastructure reconstruction, or the maintenance of law and order. (Guy‑Michel Chauveau and Gian Giacomo Migone, CIMIC and Police, Forging the "Missing Links" in Crisis Management, AT 237 CC/CSC (00) 6).

3. This evolution of NATO was sealed by the 1999 Strategic Concept, which emphasises NATO’s political role and, within the military field, stresses crisis management in addition to defence of the national territory.

4. For your Rapporteur, however, security has to be conceived in an even broader fashion. It must include conflict prevention and management through targeted actions, but perhaps more importantly, conflict prevention must become an integral part of Alliance members’ external policies, both individually and collectively. Further, security policy must tie together into a coherent whole aimed at conflict prevention, conflict management – whether the latter is carried out through military or non-military means – and post-conflict reconstruction strategies.

5. This is seldom done in national capitals, as resources for defence, development assistance, democratisation programmes, humanitarian aid, police, etc., are allocated to different budgets in a process of competition among agencies and ministries. It is also rare in the international arena, where overlaps and duplications among agencies remain common (for example among the United Nations, European Union, Organisation Security and Co-operation in Europe and NATO in the Balkans) despite recent attempts to streamline programmes.

6. In that context, the efforts by the European Union since the Feira Council (June 2000) to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with conflict situations have drawn the attention of your Rapporteur. The EU is attempting to develop what your Rapporteur, borrowing from the Venusberg Group, called a “holistic approach” of security in his 2000 analysis (Volker Kröning, Stabilizing and Securing Europe; The EU's Contribution AT 234 CC (00) 13). This approach aims to tie together not only the military and non-military means of conflict management, on which the EU is working, but also to bring together all the components of the EU’s external action in such a manner that it will be made more effective and increase its conflict prevention potential. The informal Foreign Ministers’ meeting in September 2000 in Evian was the departure point for efforts to improve the coherence of the Union’s external policies. These efforts have been strengthened in successive meetings of the General Affairs Council (GAC) since October. Further, the Union’s endeavours to link its external assistance and partnership programmes with its conflict prevention instruments were conceptualised in an 11 April communication by the European Commission (Communication on Conflict Prevention COM 2001, 211 Final). The value of the communication, in the eyes of your Rapporteur, is that it attempts to think through the components of long-term conflict-prevention strategies, which it titles “Projecting stability”, and those of short-term conflict prevention and management, grouped under the heading “Reacting quickly to nascent conflicts”.

7. Your Rapporteur will take as his point of departure the 11 April European Commission Communication, complemented by the joint Chris Patten / Javier Solana report on “practical recommendations for improving the coherence and effectiveness of EU action in the field of conflict prevention”, presented at the Nice European Council (December 2000) in order to develop his own analysis of “civilian contributions to European security”. He will use a breakdown similar to that of the Commission between “conflict prevention strategies” and “conflict management strategies” (your Rapporteur’s vocabulary), adding his own comments and selectively illustrating his point with data. He will then conclude with a few remarks focusing mainly on South-East Europe, a region where the Allies have devoted considerable political, military, and economic resources over the past 10 years, and which must remain a top priority for European security.

8. Before embarking on his main development, however, your Rapporteur would like to add a few words of explanation about the choice of his subject. As a German, and a member of the Social-Democratic Party, he is particularly sensitive to the fact that security obtains not only through military means, but also through sustained political endeavours, backed whenever necessary by heavy financial assistance. Germany’s experience since 1945 is a testimony to that reality, beginning with the role of the Marshall Plan in restoring stability and democracy to the country, through successive German governments’ work with neighbours – France in particular – to rebuild relations on a cooperative basis in the European Community, over to Chancellor Brandt’s efforts, through Ostpolitik to temper the Cold War bloc-to-bloc military confrontation with political dialogue. It should therefore have been no surprise for Germany’s allies that the country saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall as the opportunity to expand to the rest of Europe the values and model on which it had thrived, first through rapid unification, and then by facilitating by all means possible the democratisation process and economic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Apart from supporting active EU and NATO partnership and enlargement policies, Germany was willing to make a heavy contribution toward those goals, a contribution which it believes its partners, whether in the Alliance or in the EU, have not sufficiently appreciated. Allies have to consider, for instance, that western Germany transferred some US$ 540 billion to Eastern Germany between 1990 and 2000, more than double the 2000 federal German budget! Its assistance to Central and East European states amounted to about DM 70 billion (some US$ 36 billion) over 1990-98. It has also contributed, by far, the largest share of all bilateral Western assistance to the former Soviet Union (70% of G-7 bilateral assistance over 1990-95, as against 20% for the United States for instance). The repatriation of Soviet troops to Russia, not only from the territory of the former GDR, but also from Central and East European members of the Warsaw Pact, was an important item in that context. Obviously, these financial outlays benefited the security of reunified Germany, but also of its Eastern and Central European neighbours and EU partners, as well as of the Alliance as a whole. By investing massively in its Eastern Länder, in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Russia, Germany prepared the ground for the eventual strategies of stability projection represented by PfP, EU and NATO enlargement. This, in your Rapporteur’s view, should be recognised in the overall debate over allied contributions to European security.

I. CONFLICT PREVENTION STRATEGIES

9. The 11 April Commission Communication rightly addresses the question of conflict - prevention strategies (which it terms “projecting stability”) in terms of content as well as in terms of process. As far as content is concerned, the projection of stability goes through the EU’s policy toward its neighbours, including both enlargement and partnerships; its partnerships with countries and regions in other parts of the world; and its trade policies. In terms of process, two main methods are identified. One is the “mainstreaming” of conflict prevention in co-operation programmes, by which the Commission means that each co-operation programme should be targeted in such a way as to draw optimal benefit from its conflict-prevention value. The other is by “addressing cross-cutting issues in a more efficient way”; here the Commission attempts to draw attention to the interplay of factors in many conflict situations, where poverty, environmental degradation, ethnic hatred, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, trafficking in women, etc. feed on one another to create an explosive situation. Strategies thus have to be devised to tackle all these factors separately, but taking into account their mutual inter-action.

STABILITY THROUGH INTEGRATION

10. In terms of method and philosophy, the EU’s enlargement and partnership strategy is no different from that of NATO. In both cases the intention is to extend to a new circle of partners/members methods and habits of co-operation and integration that have proven their resilience over time and their effectiveness at providing security and economic prosperity to the participants. Neither is cheap, politically or economically, for either side. They are nevertheless the challenge that our governments must meet if the ambition of “a Europe whole and free” is to be more than a slogan for Sunday speeches.

11. Your Rapporteur will not dwell on EU enlargement, as he analysed its major political aspects in detail in his 2000 Report, and its political/economic components are thoroughly discussed in Harry Cohen’s report this year for the Economic and Security Committee. (Harry Cohen, Securing Continental Prosperity and Stability, The Prospects for EU Enlargement, AU 105 EC/EU (01) 5). He only wishes to say how much he shares the view of the Commission that “in offering the prospect of European integration, the EU has helped the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in their struggle to become stable democracies and functioning market economies”. This was exemplified in the mid-1990s, as your Rapporteur recalled in his 2000 report, when the Pact on Stability in Europe worked as a lever for the solution of ethnic tensions among some Central European countries, as a prelude to their rapprochement with the EU. Again, the perspective of joining the EU is the greatest incentive for the five countries of the Western Balkans to “progressively [integrate] the European model into their own structures”, as the Commission puts it. This is the rationale of the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia endorsed by the European Council in June 1999. The SAP entails a clear membership prospect for the countries concerned, provided they embark on a long - and difficult - route of economic and political reform, and agree to establish cooperative relations with their neighbours. The leverage it gives to the EU was plainly illustrated at the beginning of April in the case of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The signing of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia's Stabilisation and Association Agreement, which confers the country the status of a potential EU candidate, was used by EU mediators persuade the government to convene a roundtable to address the grievances of the Albanian population, which had contributed to the outburst of violence in the north of the country in March.

12. The EU is also trying, with more modest ambitions, to support the stabilisation of other regions, whereby the degree and intensity of its involvement is generally a function of geographic proximity. Since December 1997, a Partnership and Co-operation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Russia has been in force, complemented with an EU Common Strategy for Russia in June 1999. Similarly the EU has signed a PCA with, and adopted a Common Strategy vis-à-vis, Ukraine in December 1999. Policies toward the Mediterranean have been developed in the framework of the Barcelona process since 1995, complemented in 2000 by a Common Strategy for the Mediterranean. Despite their shortcomings, analysed with great frankness by High Representative Javier Solana earlier this year (Report on "Common Strategies" published in Bulletin Quotidien Europe 2228, 31 January 2001) these common strategies are worthwhile attempts to focus sustained attention to relations with key partners or regions and to address political, economic and human contacts with them in a coherent manner. The EU has also developed privileged partnerships with several groups of countries around the world. The aim of most of those is primarily economic. However, the conflict prevention objective - through the alleviation of poverty and economic tensions - is also present in some of them, such as the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and the 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. The same holds true for current EU assistance to Colombia, which aims to foster the process of negotiation between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas by supporting programmes of cocaine crop substitution in agriculture and civil reintegration of the fighters.

13. None of these policies and strategies comes for free, as suggested above. Pre-accession aid programmes, for examples, reached €3 billion in 2000, double the level of the year before. They included a new Pre-Accession Structural Instrument (ISPA), with a yearly budget of €1 billion for environmental and transport infrastructure projects, and a new Structural Adjustment Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD), with an annual budget of over €500 million. Resources necessary to help the poorest regions of the newcomers reach a level of development at least comparable to the EU’s average will also be staggering. EU governments have barely begun to address the issue, though, due to the resistance of those countries who have benefited most from EU regional and cohesion funds in the past. Like his colleague on the Economic and Security Committee, your Rapporteur must appeal here to the sense of European solidarity and to the promise that enlargement holds for the general political, security and economic benefit of Europe.

14. Apart from credits allocated through the European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which your Rapporteur cannot detail here, the EU has also been supporting economic and institutional reform, and infrastructure development in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe through the PHARE and TACIS programmes. Conceived initially as an instrument for technical assistance, PHARE expanded its scope and devoted some €8 billion to infrastructure improvement, enterprise reform, human resources training, and environmental programmes in Central and East European countries in 1990-1999. The United States itself was heavily involved in assisting Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, providing over US$13 in grants and loans over the same period. (Germany itself provided US$15 on a bilateral basis over 1991-97). In 2000 PHARE was redirected toward the adoption by candidate countries of the acquis communautaire in two major fields, investment support and institution building, with an annual budget of €1.5 billion for the period 2000-2006. TACIS, the EU’s major assistance programme to the 13 countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, devoted €4.7 billion to projects for environmental protection, the transition to a market economy and transport and telecommunication infrastructure over 1999-2000. Like PHARE, it was reoriented in 2000 to focus on administrative, legal and institutional reform. The programme has been allocated €3.2 billion over 2000-2006. MEDA funding for Mediterranean countries, pledged as part of the Barcelona process, although relatively generous as well (€3.4 billion for 1996-1999), has been less successful in its implementation. By September 2000 only 26% of the earmarked funds had actually been disbursed. Whether the new MEDA programme for 2001-2006 (MEDA II), granted €5.25 billion, will be carried out more effectively remains to be seen. Although continued tensions in the Middle East, which burden the Barcelona process, as well as the resistance of many Mediterranean countries to economic and political reform, certainly account for the poor success of the programme, your Rapporteur believes that the lack of a clear perspective of integration with the EU also contributes to the lacklustre performance of MEDA.

15. Responding to the old slogan “trade, not aid” as the best means to help commercial partners, the EU has also integrated a series of concessions into its trade relations. “Asymmetric” trade liberalisation was enshrined in the “Europe Agreements”, the predecessor arrangement for candidate countries. Similar concessions were extended to the five countries of the Western Balkans and significantly broadened in December 2000 in return for their committing themselves to reform and regional co-operation. Thus, since the end of 2000, some 95% of the SAP countries’ exports to the EU can enter the Single Market exempt of customs duties and charges and without quantitative restrictions or quotas. Western Balkan partners, on their side, have 10 years to liberalise their trade under SAAs, such as the one concluded with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in early April (the first of this type). Even though safeguards in sensitive areas such as agriculture, steel and textiles still exist, the arrangements are nevertheless significant if one considers that the EU represents some 50-75% of the export market of Central and East European candidate countries and accounts for some 30-50% of the Western Balkan countries’ exports – percentages that are increasing steadily.

16. Trade preferences, it should be noted, are not limited to the EU’s European partners. On 26 February 2001 the Council extended access free of customs duties and quotas to all products from the least developed countries (LDCs), with the exception of arms (“Everything But Arms” Initiative). The effect of this measure cannot yet be assessed, but in the eyes of most analysts, it will significantly beef up the export potential of many LDCs. On the contrary, as was the case for MEDA, the conclusion of Association Agreements between the EU and the Mediterranean countries, which would gradually provide for free trade arrangements with assorted EU concessions, has been lagging, except for Turkey, Cyprus and Malta, all candidate countries.

STABILITY THROUGH TARGETED PROGRAMMES

17. As articulated by the Commission Communication, conflicts have multiple causes, distant and immediate, that all need to be tackled. Your Rapporteur’s discussion of these causes differs from that of the Commission, although he basically agrees with their identification.

1. Democracy and the rule of law

18. “Countries with conflict potential are usually those where the democratic process is the least advanced”. With this remark, the Commission justifies the efforts made and to be made by the EU and its members to foster democracy, the rule of law and civil society in partner countries and future members. More and more, legal and administrative reforms are at the centre of EU’s assistance programmes such as PHARE and TACIS, including both infrastructure improvement and training (for example, for border control). Such reforms are also recognised as key prerequisites for any kind of economic development to take hold in places such as Bosnia and Kosovo, where the international community is heavily involved (Bosnia has engulfed some $US5 billion of external assistance over the past five years, with relatively little to show for it at this point). The counterpart to assistance for democratic reform is a policy of democratic conditionality, which subordinates aid and trade concessions to progress in establishing and respecting the rule of law. Similarly, international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have been placing increasing stress these past few years on “good governance” as a prerequisite to assistance.

19. The concept of linking the rule of law with economic development and conflict prevention/resolution is well-founded. It is, however, sometimes difficult to implement in practice. For example, EU governments are often reluctant to mar their relations with this or that Mediterranean, African, or Asian country by withholding assistance or trade favours for the sake of human rights – a policy which elicits loud criticism from the European Parliament and NGOs. Another difficulty is in the application of sanctions: when and how to implement them so that they hurt a government without penalising its people? In which conditions should they be lifted? As illustrated by the Rapporteurs of the Sub-Committee on Democratic Governance in the case of Serbia, the allies at times have different views on the matter: while the EU swiftly lifted most of the sanctions on Serbia in October 2000, the US removed some of them in December and conditioned its further aid to the country to clear gestures of co-operation with the International War Crimes Tribunal. Another aspect is whether democratisation assistance is better conveyed through government structures or through the non-governmental sector. The former tends to have the preference of the EU, whereas the United States is comparatively more actively involved at grassroots level. In the eyes of your Rapporteur, both are necessary in the sense that no stability will be installed in a country until it has effective, transparent and well-functioning government institutions, whereas the sustainability of democracy over time requires an active citizenry that can express itself through multiple voices in parties, trade unions, media, academia, women's and environmental groups, etc. The difficulty is for the mix to be well-balanced and also flexible in order to accommodate changes in circumstances. For example, in view of the internal tensions in Ukraine and the government’s ambivalence about reform, the US Agency for International Development (US AID) recently redirected its assistance away from official structures to grassroots groups. Similarly, in Belarus the US stresses the need to support NGOs and independent media and to avoid any measure that could help the government.

2. Security Sector Reform

20. Increasingly, assistance programmes stress the need for reform of the “security sector”. While the concept remains fuzzy, it covers the military, but also the police, part of the judicial sector (particularly the part linked to prisons), and the various paramilitary forces that exist in many countries. It could also include defence industrial conversion. “Security sector reform” - as much as the concept is defined - goes much beyond the traditional policies of reduction in the number of troops and arms cuts. It includes a fundamental transformation in the way armed and security forces operate, their civilian control (including the key question of parliamentary oversight), the redefinition of the functions of internal and external security, the retraining of former fighters (often guerrilla or child soldiers) and their reintegration into civilian roles, the retirement of older military personnel, the retraining of former weapons scientists, etc.

21. The need for security sector reform was initially brought home by the realisation that in specific situations a peace agreement is only the first step in a process that must bring stability back to a country or conflicting parties. Such was the case in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Mozambique, etc., and, closer to the European home, Bosnia and Kosovo. The EU, often working in co-operation with others (such as the World Bank) is supporting or planning to support demobilisation and reintegration programmes in Cambodia, Eritrea, Burundi and the Republic of Congo (among others), whereby it pays particular attention to child soldiers. In Kosovo the demobilisation and retraining of former KLA guerrilla has been carried out under the auspices of the International Organisation for Migrations (OIM), part of it through the creation of the 5,000-strong Kosovo Protection Corps.

22. Also contributing to security sector reform are the programmes to help with the retraining of former weapons specialists and scientists, in which the US has made a major contribution in the past 10 years. Your Rapporteur fears that this engagement may not be sustained under the Bush Administration. At the same time, he urges stronger European, political and financial engagement into so-called "cooperative threat reduction programmes". The International Centre for Science and Technology (ICST), which is funded some 35% by the EU and 30% by the United States, is a good example of a multilateral undertaking to prevent the proliferation of weapons from the spread of scientists' expertise from the former Soviet Union.

23. Finally, the awareness of the destructive potential of small arms - these “’weapons of mass destruction’ of the poor”, as the Commission puts it - has led Western countries to develop dedicated programmes to combat their trade and accumulation. The Commission, however, regrets that efforts in the field, including the EU’s own, have remained very modest compared with the amplitude of the problem. It hopes that the UN conference on the illegal trade in light weapons and small arms, to be held in Summer 2001, will give the issue enough salience that dedicated efforts will follow. Your Rapporteur shares that hope.

24. The Commission’s remarks on small arms reflect the situation of the entire field of security sector reform, which has mostly been approached so far through piecemeal and limited measures that do not do justice to the magnitude of the problem and the relationships between its various aspects. Thus, NATO, the EU, the UN, individual countries, NGOs, etc., all have programmes that contribute to security sector reform, but these programmes remain unco-ordinated, so that their effectiveness is limited and gaps are not properly addressed. For example NATO’s military reform programmes in Partner countries do not include paramilitary forces, whereas there is only limited involvement in police reform and retraining by the EU, the WEU, the OSCE and the UN. Your Rapporteur certainly sees a need to link efforts in this field and suggests that this could be a fruitful domain for NATO-EU co-operation in the future, at least as regards Europe.

3. Drugs

25. The Commission highlights the relationship between drugs, crime, terrorism and guerrilla war, identifying two main routes by which the drug trade carries conflict along: the cocaine road from Latin America, and the heroin trade from Afghanistan. For EU members, the fight against drug trafficking seems to be a fruitful area for broad-ranging co-operation as part of a conflict‑prevention strategy. Thus, in April 2001 EU member states endorsed an Action Plan on drugs with four Central Asian states, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, and Uzbekistan. Suggestions for parliamentary work in this domain were also made by members of the Russian Federal Assembly during the joint Committee visit to Moscow in early April. Your Rapporteur believes that the Assembly should respond positively to the Russian initiative. He proposes that joint Russia-NATO PA work be centred on the link between drug trafficking and conflict in the Euro-Atlantic region, and that the Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security take the lead in this project.

4. “Human issues”

26. By “human issues” your Rapporteur understands such questions as mass populations flows, human trafficking and communicable diseases. Mass population flows are most likely to be the consequence of conflict than its cause although, as the Commission remarks, large flows of people (in case of famine, for example) can also contribute to the spread and aggravation of conflict. The same is true of communicable diseases, which can cause damage in such proportion that they jeopardize the capacity of a group of people to manage itself economically, socially and politically, as is happening in several countries in Africa.

27. Human trafficking, including the trafficking of women, is most often the consequence of a combination of factors encompassing economic destitution, the breakdown of social structures, the absence of effective government and the rule of law, which leave free rein to criminals to carry out their trade. It is often connected with drug or weapon smuggling and guerrilla warfare, as is seen in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. The battle against human trafficking will only be won through a combination of wide-ranging efforts to deal with the root causes of conflicts and specific actions to dismantle trafficking rings. Your Rapporteur hopes that this matter will be a top priority of European co-operation in Justice and Home Affairs, both among current members and with incoming members. He is pleased to note that the EU and the US will soon start a common project to combat trafficking in women in Russia.

5. The management of natural resources

28. The relationship between the way a human community manages the environment and conflict is not well understood, partly because situations are so diverse but partly also because it has not sufficiently been studied. A lack of comprehensive analysis should not, however, excuse inaction in a number of areas where better management of the environment and natural resources could help prevent or dampen conflict. Such is the case in those places in Africa where the pillage of mineral resources (in particular, but not only, diamonds) serves only to fuel guerrilla warfare, or areas where disregard for a fragile ecological balance can lead to unsustainable patterns of farming or grazing, and eventually force mass population movements. The UN sanctions regime against the trade in “conflict diamonds” is a worthwhile attempt to tackle one particular aspect of the problem, although it can only work if all UN members apply it faithfully, possibly sanctioning former “clients” who benefit from it.

29. Western countries have only remote influence on the management of natural resources that are mainly used by locals in a particular region or country. They can, however, through their policies of assistance, extend warnings, technical support or financial help – depending on the circumstances – to stem the problem before it reaches disaster proportions. Conversely, they have a direct responsibility in those domains in which their own environmental management has consequences for the whole planet. The Commission Communication, with good reasons, mentions global climate change, reminding governments that global warming can pose a significant threat to 60% of the world population who live in coastal areas and could see their existence or livelihood put in jeopardy.

6. The economy

30. A sound economic environment, as the Commission Communication puts it, is part of structural stability. Macro-economic stabilisation is the main purpose of IMF programmes and of many World Bank and EBRD projects. The European countries and the United States being the major shareholders of these institutions, they directly contribute to economic stabilisation worldwide (even if IMF and World Bank programmes are sometimes controversial). The EC further buttresses these efforts in regions or countries of immediate significance to its interests, such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Moldova, and Ukraine. At a global level it stresses the need to combine macro-economic stabilisation with poverty reduction, highlighting the significant contribution to the multilateral debt reduction initiative for the Highly-Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) made by EU countries recently, and their willingness to actively support IMF and World Bank poverty reduction programmes underway or in preparation.

31. A less well-trodden area, which the Commission cursorily discusses, is that of the role of private-sector business in the maintenance or creation of the structural causes of conflict. There exist, in the context of the OECD, too-little-known “Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises”, which aim to encourage businesses to behave responsibly when operating abroad, in particular in developing countries. Politicians, including the members of the Assembly, may want to become more familiar with those guidelines, to be able to invoke them in their interaction with private enterprises. Your Rapporteur also believes that the work currently underway at the Commission to develop a “Green Paper on Corporate Social Responsibility”, which will address the issue of conflict prevention and the possible role of business in this field, will deserve wide discussion and diffusion. More broadly he considers that the trend in greater interaction between humanitarian work and private-sector investment, which is seen for example in the increasing co-operation of the UN with the business world, deserves greater attention from politicians.

C. STABILITY THROUGH IMPROVED PROGRAMME CO-ORDINATION AND MANAGEMENT

32. Successfully averting conflict implies coherence at two ends. In the conflict-prone country or society, it calls for close attention to the interplay between political, economic, human, sociological and environmental developments to ascertain that the outcome consolidates “structural stability”, as the Commission puts it. On the side of international actors, it requires that all efforts converge toward the same goal of conflict avoidance or de-escalation, or at least do not undermine each other. Attention has been drawn to the need for this convergence and co-ordination in the EU framework since the beginning of 2000, by the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, and the Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, who seem to see eye-to-eye on the necessity to reinforce the coherence of the EU’s external action.

33. The frankness of the two officials’ institutional self-criticism, exemplified in March 2000 by their joint report on the Western Balkans and again by a candid analysis of the weakness of the EU’s Common Strategies made by the High Representative earlier this year (this analysis to which we referred in section I was not originally meant to be made public), seems to have prompted EU Governments to action. A process of in-depth review of the effectiveness of the EU’s external action was launched at the informal ministerial meeting in Evian in September 2000. By early 2001, it had led to a number of steps, involving both the Commission and the Member States.

34. These steps include both new instruments and new methods. Among the key new instruments will be “Country Strategy Papers”, which will be drafted by the Commission for all the countries that receive assistance from the EU. Each Strategy Paper will include an assessment of potential conflict situations, with the support of specific conflict indicators. For those countries where risk factors have been identified, the Commission vows that “conflict prevention measures will be made an integral part of the overall programmes of the Community”. The Strategy Papers will also be the basis for “country indexes” where Member States, for the first time, will have access to aggregate data on the aid a country receives from the EU and its members in all forms, and a comparison with the aid received from other sources. At Community level, greater transparency should result from the reform of the management of external assistance through the creation of Europe Aid, a single agency responsible for the disbursement of all funds (except emergency humanitarian assistance, which remains under ECHO, and the PHARE programme), which became operational on 1 January 2001. Two pilot projects in terms of co-ordination improvement will be steered by the Commission, one on the Balkans and the other on the Great Lakes.

35. So that these Commission efforts do not remain isolated, better co-ordination is planned between the Commission, Member States and the Council Secretariat. This co-ordination should take place on the ground, between Commission delegations (there are some 130 around the world) and the diplomatic representations of Member States. It should also be organised at the central level, at the same time as Community external aid is given a more prominent political focus. Here a major instrument will be an annual General Affairs Council debate on the EU’s external action, including both a regular review of the common strategies and an examination of the Community aid and its effectiveness. A first such debate was held in January 2000. The focal item of that debate was the critical evaluation of the common strategies by High Representative Solana, which concluded on a number of measures to streamline that instrument, giving the High Representative a central role in steering the implementation of the strategies and piloting their re‑evaluation when necessary.

36. One more area to which the EU has pledged to devote greater attention is that of the relationship between the various phases of a post-conflict situation, in particular the transition from relief operations to reconstruction, reconciliation and development programmes. At the time of writing, a Commission Communication was being prepared on “the Link between Relief, Rehabilitation and Development” (LRRD). Your Rapporteur hopes to brief the members on the LRRD paper at a later date.

II. CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

37. Conflict prevention is a task all our countries should be pursuing with greater determination. Regardless, we all know that differences of values and interests at times lead to escalation. Conflict management, then, is of the essence, if necessary with military means. This is why the EU is trying to build a rapid reaction force of up to 60,000 troops, which will be able to perform the entire spectrum of the Petersberg tasks, including “humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking”. In this section your Rapporteur would like to review how the EU sees its potential role and influence in conflict management, complementing his 2000 analysis on this subject.

A. OPTIMISING EXISTING EU INSTRUMENTS

38. A leitmotif of those who criticize the EU’s inability to make a difference in crisis situations – a criticism shared by many EU actors themselves – has been that the 15 EU members possess many tools at their disposal to prevent and manage conflicts, but they are unable to use them effectively. Could this change?

39. The Commission, in its recent Communication, notes that in many instances, the EU has failed to be a credible actor because of the inability of its members to adopt a common political line on sensitive issues. Its diplomatic demarches, dialogue within partnership agreements, or fact‑finding missions - and your Rapporteur would also add, at times, sanctions policies - have failed to impress the parties. On this, your Rapporteur would like to make a few comments.

40. First, the EU should, in his view, avoid "biting off more than it can chew”; i.e. it should focus on a limited number of situations where it can make a difference. In this context, the EU certainly has greater leverage on those European countries that have a prospect of becoming members or being closely associated, and perhaps on some African countries with which Members States have historical links, than on other parts of the world. The countries of the Balkans are a case in point, as alluded to above.

41. Second, even if it cannot solve a conflict entirely, the EU may nevertheless be able to help assuage some particularly sore aspects of a conflict situation. For example, in January 2001, when Israel withheld tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority, the Commission stepped in to avert the economic collapse of the Autonomous Territories with an emergency €30 million cash inflow. Similarly, its channelling of €250 million emergency aid to Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in Spring 1999 avoided a further destabilisation of the region. It would be wrong, however, to see the EU’s influence only through its capacity to deliver cash. For example, your Rapporteur believes that the deployment of some 20 EU observers in the Presevo Valley (the incarnation of the new European Union Monitoring Mission, EUMM) has reassuring value vis-à-vis both the Albanian population and the Serb military, and it usefully complements KFOR’s surveillance mission. In the Middle East, the presence of a Special Representative (Miguel Angel Moratinos, from Spain) similarly reassures the Palestinians who do not trust the neutrality of the main peace-broker, the United States. Along that line, the Commission’s April communication proposes to develop the instrument of the Special Representative. Your Rapporteur would agree on the condition that all precautions are taken when such emissaries are appointed to describe their role precisely and point to its limitations. Too often in the past it is the discrepancy between the expectations raised by political announcements and their results that has led to disparaging judgments on the EU’s capacity to act on the international scene.

42. Third, the well-documented historical reality that diplomacy is more effective when backed by force should also apply in the case of the EU, once it has achieved the Helsinki goals in the defense field. Progress has been made on the institutional front with the appointment of a Chairman of the Military Committee, four-star General Gustav Hägglund, from Finland, in April, and the full recruitment of the Military Staff (now headed by three-star General Rainer Schuwirth, from Germany). Whether this will be matched by progress in the buildup of the force in the course of this year remains to be seen.

B. DEVELOPING NEW EU CONFLICT MANAGEMENT INSTRUMENTS

43. In his 2000 analysis, your Rapporteur gave a fairly comprehensive overview of the plans outlined in Helsinki and Feira to develop new EU non-military crisis management instruments. The present report will therefore only update the information presented last year, adding a few comments where necessary.

44. Members will remember that in the field of police, the EU’s objective is to be able to deploy, by 2003, up to 5,000 police officers in crisis theatres, including 1,000 within 30 days. By the time members discuss this report in Vilnius, a first Police Capabilities Conference will have been held (it is planned by the Swedish Presidency for 10 May), at which Member States Chiefs of Police will indicate their likely contributions towards the Feira targets. On this matter your Rapporteur can only echo the conclusions and recommendations of the 2000 Sub-committee report, in which Messrs Chauveau and Migone pointed to the gaping shortfalls in the law-and-order component of international peace operations, and expressed the hope that the EU could make a significant contribution in this field. He urges all members of the Assembly belonging to current and future EU Member States to give particular attention to police deployments in their national budget decisions, so that significant contributions can be announced at the formal capacities pledging conference to be held under the Belgian EU Presidency this fall.

45. Work on the police has led to the realisation that significant results could not be achieved without the concomitant build-up of a “rule of law” capability. This means judicial personnel able to put in place a suitable criminal-justice infrastructure in emergency and then, over time, along the police, to help rebuild a judicial and penal system. Efforts to develop an EU capability in this domain are proceeding according to the same method as for the police and the military. Council services have completed a database of the Member States’ ability to make available judicial and penal staff; on that basis, they are in the process of setting specific targets, in conjunction with the development of policing capabilities. A “capacities pledging conference” could be the next step. As in the case of police, the problem will be to find ways to overcome the lack of appropriately qualified and available personnel.

46. Assuming the EU earmarks and develops capabilities for non-military crisis management, what remains unclear is how these capabilities will be set in motion. Unlike in the military field, in which a planning staff is now fully operational – notwithstanding the remaining differences and uncertainties on the division of labour between the EU’s planning staff and SHAPE in the preparation of EU military operations – the planning and supporting structures for the non-military part of the EU’s crisis management have yet to be created. While it has been agreed that police operations will not be planned under the Military Staff, at the time of writing, European Security Review reported that disagreement remained between those who wished the immediate build-up of a police planning staff of at least 15 personnel – mostly the states with para-military police traditions and those eager to support the development of civil crisis management as a counterpart to the swift build-up in the military field; and those who wanted to go more slowly, recruiting a small number of police experts (perhaps four, in addition to the two existing ones) to better define requirements before a full police planning staff was hired. These countries are those that have civilian policing traditions and a long experience in UN or OSCE police missions; they are also eager to see police operations planned within an integrated structure for crisis management rather than in a separate structure.

47. The EU’s general apparatus for civil crisis management itself is an item on which uncertainty still prevails. Since the summer 2000 the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management has become operational. The type and size of the supporting structures on which it will be able to draw, however, remains undecided. A common proposal has been drafted by the Commission and the Council for the creation of 51 new posts – a significant increase from the current 42 - to staff three new Directorates in charge of, respectively, Political Affairs, Operations and Exercises, and External Actions Mechanisms. At the time of writing, the proposal was being discussed – and disputed – by the European Parliament. Your Rapporteur will account for new developments on this matter in the autumn version of his report.

48. To complete his overview of recent developments in the field of non-military crisis management, your Rapporteur must signal that the Rapid Reaction Mechanism (RRM), endorsed in principle in Helsinki in December 1999, has now become operational. The RRM, approved by the Council on 26 February, will allow the Commission to carry out short-term operations under a swift disbursement procedure, either to respond to specific emergencies, or to fill the gap in situations where initial speed is essential, but action needs to be relayed by longer term peace-building, reconstruction and development relying on traditional Community instruments. Operations undertaken under the RRM could consist of the deployment of observers, fact-finding missions, police or administrators; urgent demining or disarmament operations; short-term refugee relief; or targeted assistance, such as provided to Serbian cities under the Energy for Democracy programme in 1999, or the aid brought to Montenegro to offset the economic pressure by the Milosevic Government during the Kosovo crisis. At this point, the RRM budget is modest, with €20 million allocated in 2001 and €25 million in 2002.

CONCLUSION

49. At the end of NATO’s Kosovo air operation in late spring 1999, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made that sweeping comment: “The United States has paid for the war, the Europeans must pay for the reconstruction”. Even if the facts to some extent corroborate that statement, your Rapporteur hopes to have demonstrated by his analysis that security cannot be summarised to a military strike operation, followed by a massive economic reconstruction programme. He would also oppose those who would want to enshrine a “division of labour” of the kind described by Dr Albright in the Atlantic Alliance, with the United States doing the “heavy lifting” and the Europeans in charge of the “soft” aspects of security.

50. It is right for the Europeans to build capabilities that will enable them to play a stronger role in future military operations, and perhaps to carry out these operations themselves at some stage, in agreement with their Alliance partners. It is also important for the United States to remain involved politically and economically in Europe for many reasons. To name a few, American economic investment in the new democracies, including Russia, is of interest to both US business and the recipient countries themselves; the United States must remain a privileged political partner for Russia, Europe’s greatest power, even as the EU is trying to develop its own cooperative arrangements with Moscow; finally, the US, with its tradition of democracy anchored in an ebullient civil society, can be a unique source of inspiration and advice for the development of deeply-rooted forms of citizen participation in Central and Eastern Europe.

51. But it is also right that the EU, due to its geographic proximity, and taking into account its economic power, should take the lead in supporting the political and economic reform process of its Eastern and South-Eastern neighbours, and bear the primary responsibility in allaying tensions when they occur. The EU has invested some €29.4 billion in the candidate countries over 1990‑1999 (including €8.4 billion in subsidies and €21.3 billon in credits). It is planning to multiply this sum by more than threefold over 2000-2006, to reach some €80 billion as enlargement proceeds. Western Balkan countries (i.e. the countries of former Yugoslavia, minus Slovenia, plus Albania) have received from the EU €6.3 billion over 1991-1999, most of it in the form of gifts (€5.2 billion, of which €2.3 billion were in humanitarian assistance). They are slated to receive another €4.65 billion in assistance under the new Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development, and Stability (CARDS) programme over 2001-2006. For the sake of comparison, the US assistance budget for the countries of South-Eastern Europe (also including Romania and Bulgaria) for the fiscal year 2001 is US$ 675 million, according to US Department of State data.

52. Numbers matter, of course, especially at a time when the countries concerned need a massive influx of resources to get their infrastructures rebuilt and their economies jumpstarted. But perhaps as important is the political follow-up and attention to detail that goes with the investment. Thus, it was of primary importance to deliver energy to Serbian cities in the winter of 1999-2000, or to extend additional financial support to UNMIK in February 2000 so that it could continue to pay administrators, policemen, and the members of the Kosovo Protection Corps. Similarly, it made a difference that the Commission was able to pledge € 900,000 in emergency aid to the Presevo Valley in support of the conflict resolution plan there in April and that it earmarked funds in late March to help with the financing of a TV station in Albanian, for the University of Tetovo, and for programmes to support the integration of the Albanian minority in the process of economic development for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Again, it was an important political gesture that, as early as October 2000 the EU pledged €180 million in emergency assistance to Serbia, with the EU’s CARDS budget for the Republic being latter set at €240 million for 2001. The United States followed suit in December, pledging US$158 million in “rapid disbursing assistance” to the FRY.

53. As the Sub-committee Rapporteurs remarked, there is an agreement between the United States and its European allies that the task of reintegrating Serbia into the European fold, and helping the whole of South-Eastern Europe transform itself into a zone of democracy, political stability, and economic prosperity, falls primarily on the European Union. The long-term prospect of integration into the EU is meant to foster that goal. In the meantime, there are many tensions that will need to be assuaged, incidents to be circumscribed, threats to be warded off, negotiation processes to be facilitated, and more broadly, political and economic choices to be made in which the EU’s diplomatic skills, the effectiveness of its assistance and adequacy of its intervention will be tested. The conflict prevention and conflict management capacity with which it is trying to endow itself will be an integral part of security building in the Euro-Atlantic area – and perhaps a more important component than its capacity to carry out military operations.

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