peace" "
A more convinced foreign policy to promote peace in the world: that’s what the “Justice and Peace” Commission of France and Germany ask of the European Union “We French and German Christians believe that the European Union, which results from the reconciliation between the peoples of Western Europe, may play a fundamental role today in promoting peace in the European continent and in the rest of the world”. With this declaration opens the joint declaration with the title “The European Union serves peace” of the “Justice and Peace” Commissions of France and Germany. The statement was issued on 8 May, the day commemorating Germany’s surrender to the Allies and the end of the Second World War. Dialogue with the Arab world. Much of the document is dedicated to the international situation. “The countries of the European Union write the Churches of France and Germany in their joint declaration have experienced enough wars of religion in their history to understand the dangers that every form of religious extremism brings with it”. The two church commissions refer in particular to the Arab world and ask Europe to re-launch with greater vigour the process begun in Barcelona on cooperation between the countries of the Mediterranean: “We believe they write that a dialogue between the Union and the Arab and Islamic world is not only possible but must be one of the essential elements to reduce tensions”. The “grave” crisis of the Middle East. With regard to the Holy Land, apart from urging a greater collaboration between France and Germany, the document endorses the proposals of the international community for a solution to the conflict: the recognition of Israel and the guarantee of her right to exist; the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories; and the creation of a Palestinian state. All this without forgetting the need to find a solution to the problem of the refugees and to implement “effective measures to stop terrorist violence, which is especially directed against the civil populations, from claiming new victims”. The Union and crisis management. The “Justice and Peace” Commissions of France and Germany ask the European Union to equip itself with a more effective foreign policy. To play a more decisive role at the international level, “the Union says the document has a need for strong internal coherence and the necessary resources to express it abroad” but first of all it must “clearly and explicitly define a common collective interest”. “In practice the two commissions point out it may be ascertained that the feeling of this collective interest is not sufficiently developed: and this inadequacy is at once the cause and the consequence of the fact that the member states continue to pursue national interests, to the detriment of the visibility and effectiveness of the Union’s role”. “The recent initiatives of the UK. France and Germany in the crisis of Afghanistan represent another example of this preference for national action”. The use of force and the prevention of conflicts. The document in particular urges the Union to provide itself with the necessary means and resources to “make its weight felt in international crises” and to intervene in them “as a player of new type”, activating traditional and economic procedures and adopting “means (military and non-military) for crisis management”. In this regard, the two church Commissions emphasize that “the use of violence is always an evil, even if used to oppose a greater evil” and that the recourse to the armed forces must occur “under strict conditions”: these include such conditions as “having a moral reason to intervene”; “respecting the framework of international legality”; “evaluating whether the foreseeable damage be not greater than the evil that the intervention is aimed to combat”; and “having available, for the period following the armed intervention, a political project aimed at ensuring that grave situations of injustice or threats are not repeated”. “We will always be particularly attentive declare the two Commissions to the efforts of every kind, diplomatic, economic and humanitarian, made by the EU for the prevention of conflicts”. In this regard, the document relaunches the proposal that “voluntary forms of civilian service” be established in support of missions of aid to development and crisis management. Maria Chiara Biagioni
