European Parliament
Franziska Katharina Brantner,
on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group.
Baroness Ashton, the US is moving away from Europe. What does this mean for us? Of course we have to look at the future of pooling and sharing within the common security and defence policy. It is advancing very slowly. Maybe my daughter might see some results one day. It is not your fault – it is the Member States.
However, with that as a background, there are three things that have become even more important and they actually come under your responsibility: first, conflict prevention; second, better crisis management; and third, peace building. These come under your responsibility and we need the best of our tools – former Commission and former Council – coordinated and embedded in one structure in order to develop common concepts and approaches, for example in the rule of law, security sector reform and border management.
Developing common approaches is different from managing day-to-day crises. We need to be ready for crises. I thank you for establishing the crisis platform, but where is the appropriate structure you were promising during the negotiations of the External Action Service? Where is it happening? My question is, when will we see that structure and how will it be reflected in the budget for 2013 that the External Action Service is currently drafting?

