Spaanse minister van defensie benadrukt belang van Atalanta-missie in de strijd tegen de piraterij (en)
The Spanish Minister for Defence, Carme Chacón, during a symposium on piracy held in Brussels. EFE
Spain's Minister of Defence, Carme Chacón, announced in the European Parliament on Thursday that Spain would be stepping up its contribution to the Atalanta mission, which is fighting piracy off the coasts of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, by sending a Galicia class amphibious assault ship and an ocean-going patrol craft to relieve the frigate Victoria, which is currently in the region, along with the P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, which will also stay in the area.
Speaking at the opening of a symposium on piracy, organised by the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council and supported by the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, Chacón expressed her wish for participants to contribute ideas to help improve coordination between the anti-piracy efforts of players such as the European Union and NATO and individual countries such as Russia, India and China.
“There is no doubt that the Treaty of Lisbon gives us new opportunities to increase the effectiveness of our actions, and we should take advantage of this. This is why Spain has wanted to look at what the European Union is doing to tackle piracy, and how we can increase coordination or even, if relevant, what new actions we should take”, said the minister, after reiterating that Atalanta is one of the most important missions combating this problem on the ground.
The minister acknowledged the need to “focus” more efforts on the main ports that the skiffs and mother ships the pirates use leave from, and above all to "improve the legal framework" to make it easier to arrest and try pirates, regardless of the fact that various Member States are modifying their own penal codes to classify piracy as a specific crime and make their own national courts available as a last resort.
Chacón underscored “the risk” involved if the pirates' area of action “spreads”, and said it was “urgent” for the international community to respond in a “forceful and above all coordinated” way and provide a “comprehensive solution” to wipe out this phenomenon. Around 400 people are still being held by pirates in the region despite the fact that Atalanta has managed to reduce the number of attacks resulting in kidnappings by half, and has managed to disband 50 groups of pirates, totalling around 300 individuals, in the past four months alone, as well as capturing more than 100 skiffs and mother ships.
The minister underscored the fact that piracy is "a problem that affects us all, without any doubt", and poses "one of the greatest threats", going on to stress that the European Union has a particular responsibility to provide “all the necessary means” within its power to help deal with the root causes of the problem which are “on dry land”, and prevent Somalia and its authorities, which are “incapable of guaranteeing security in their own land" from being held “hostage by a group of criminals”.
On this issue, she highlighted the importance of the training mission that the EU has put in place in Uganda to train 2,000 troops from the Somali security forces within one year, a mission that has already started work on the ground and in which Spain is acting as the "framework nation", since it is providing the largest amount of troops, one-third of the total.
She also noted the fact that Spain, the leading donor of aid to Somalia, will in September host the next meeting of the International Contact Group for this country in the Horn of Africa, which will analyse the progress of peace-building and reconstruction efforts in the country, to which the international community pledged a total of €165 million in 2009.