EU to debate role in war prevention

Date: 11/04/1996

By Rory Watson

MOVES to give the European Union a stronger global role in conflict prevention are to be considered by the Intergovernmental Conference as it draws up new foreign policy priorities.

The Italian presidency has already raised the prospect of more active Union involvement in defusing potentially explosive situations around the world with its EU partners and plans to pursue the idea during the IGC negotiations.

The search for effective conflict prevention measures comes as policy-makers are still coming to grips with the human and financial costs of violence as far apart as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Somalia and Georgia.

“We have seen in all the most recent crises that there is a role for the European Union. Because of the costs involved, no country can play this role alone. There is a place for European action, particularly given the United Nations' financial crisis,” said a senior Italian diplomat.

Italy believes the Union's common security policy should have two objectives: to guarantee the Union's frontiers and to establish measures for conflict prevention and humanitarian intervention.

The emphasis now being placed on conflict prevention is also being given a sympathetic hearing by neutral countries such as Sweden, Austria, Finland and Ireland.

The independent research group Saferworld and the non-governmental organisation International Alert argue that such an initiative would yield economic, humanitarian and political dividends for the Union, pointing out that while the EU is the world's largest development aid donor, an increasing amount of funding is eaten up in emergency responses to conflicts.

Saferworld executive director Paul Eavis believes effective conflict prevention could also rally popular support behind the Union. “It would make the Union more relevant to its citizens. They have been told so often that there is nothing that can be done about these conflicts within countries that a sense of total helplessness exists. This could reverse that feeling,” he says.

Last year, 28 man-made humanitarian disasters affecting 60 million people were identified world-wide.

Recent influxes of refugees have placed a heavier burden on some EU governments than on others - the arrival of refugees from the former Yugoslavia has added 1.7 billion ecu to Germany's annual budget alone.

Nor is multinational business immune. Earlier investment and vital facilities can be destroyed in such conflicts, and trading and manufacturing opportunities lost.

Saferworld and International Alert argue that the tide could be turned if the Union used the IGC to agree specific institutional changes to improve its early warning mechanisms, and maintain that an existing EU code of conduct on weapon exports should be written into the revised Maastricht Treaty.

EU countries are responsible for 30&percent; of weapons sales to developing countries around the world, but operate widely contradictory export criteria.

The two independent organisations also believe that the Union could replicate the stability pact it operates for Central and Eastern Europe in Africa, as part of a wider programme to guarantee human rights and the safety of ethnic minorities.

The IGC negotiators have been specifically mandated by EU leaders to consider ways of increasing the Union's effectiveness on the international stage and ensuring decisions are taken in time to be effective.

There is growing support for the creation of a special foreign policy unit to analyse political trends and try to anticipate events. “It would be a logical step for this unit to work as an alarm system giving early warning of possible conflicts,” said a senior Swedish official.

Another EU diplomat complained: “The problem now is that there is no long-term planning and analysis and so the Union is always reacting, and usually slowly, to events.”