Despite a packed crisis agenda, at the June 2016 EU Summit, High Representative Federica Mogherini presented to the European Council the EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy which she was mandated with by the European Heads of State a year ago.

The development took place amid concerns linked to the arc of instability that has been surrounding the EU for many months. The wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the conflict in eastern Ukraine, terrorism and hybrid threats come quickly to mind.

Very much aware that threats to peace and security have become increasingly complex and require an effective and well-coordinated common European response, Catholic EU bishops prepared, ahead of the summit, a positive and constructive contribution to the reflection on reshaping the EU’s strategic guidance for foreign and security policy.

Acting through the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE), the bishops prepared a report entitled ‘Europe’s Vocation to Promote Peace in the World’, aiming at an authentic European Peace Policy based on three pillars: pre-emptive peacebuilding, peace through justice, and peace through security.

Reminding the EU of its unique vocation to promote peace in its neighbourhood and worldwide, the report offered 21 policy recommendations addressed to the EU institutions for an integral ap­proach to foreign and security policy.

COMECE’s proposals dealt with peace diplomacy, migration and mobility, counter-terrorism, development cooperation and humanitarian aid, international trade and economy, and role of Churches and religious communities. They were submitted to Mogherini who, welcoming them, highlighted the specific contribution the Church can make to the EU’s peace-building mission with its worldwide networks and a broad societal outreach.

Mogherini’s response in this regard was much valued by COMECE also because its recommendations include a solicitation for EU leaders to recognise and take into consideration the role of Churches and religious communities in promoting peace, in particular with regard to early conflict prevention, counter-radicalisation, provision of development and humanitarian aid, post-conflict management and reconciliation.

COMECE’s effort was further awarded with seeing the new EU Global Strategy reflecting several of its recommendations. Indeed, the strategy emphasises the need for better policy coherence and coordination across European institutions and Member States, and calls for a stronger adherence to the founding values of the European Union.

It also offers a robust and ambitious vision for EU’s role in its neighbourhood and in the world by recalling the principles of strategic partnership, regional cooperation and a reformed durable global governance.

Still, COMECE noted with regret that EU leaders did not bestow on the Global Strategy that level of ownership as on its predecessor, the Security Strategy of 2003, because they merely welcomed the presentation of the strategy without formally adopting it. The hope remains that this will not lower the level of commitment of EU Member States and European institutions who share a common responsibility for a proper and energetic implementation of the strategy.

Recommending to the EU to promote the concept of sustainable development in all its dimensions – economic, social and environmental – and to commit itself to initiatives that aim at actively and truly empowering third countries and their inhabitants to become agents of their own development, the COMECE document included a brief but direct reference to “good governance and the fight against corruption”.

The need for a forceful campaign against the phenomenon on corruption, which remains a vicious antagonist of peace and is also connected to drug-trafficking, to money laundering, to the illegal trade of arms, and to other forms of criminality appears to be a fundamental, because corruption undermines peacebuilding and peace through justice and security.

There are very clear and empirically demonstrated connections between corruption and functional limitations of institutional systems, between corruption and the index of human development, between corruption and social injustices.

Catholic social teaching lists corruption among the causes that greatly contribute to underdevelopment and poverty. This is not merely a process that weakens the economic system: corruption hinders the promotion of the person and makes societies less just and therefore less secure and peaceful.

cphbuttigieg@gmail.com

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