"Europe can do more!" This is the rallying cry of the four leading German Peace research institutes call for in their current Peace Report, which they have presented today at the Federal Press Conference in Berlin. The European Union must increase its ability to act within the global power structure in order to respond the global challenges by providing non-military solutions.
Use non-military room for manoeuvre and create a coronavirus peace dividend
Within the European Union, this means resolutely tackling nationalist tendencies, the dismantling of democracy and mismanagement. In foreign policy, measures must be taken, for example, in the conflicts in Donbas and Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, in order to increase the willingness of the actors involved to compromise without sacrificing fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. In its relations with the Global South, the European Union will also have to determine new priorities: It can contribute to a fair distribution of vaccines, mitigate the socio-economic costs of the pandemic and readjust poverty- and food policies. This requires a radical rethinking of military spending: The Peace Report proposes reducing spending on arms and the military, thus freeing up urgently needed funds for the global fight against the pandemic. As tax revenues are falling due to the pandemic and national budgets are shrinking, the world needs the coronavirus peace dividend.
The central recommendations of the Peace Report 2021 to the German government and the EU can be found in our press release.
Find more information at www.friedensgutachten.de/en.
About the Peace Report
The Peace Report is the joint yearbook of the German Institutes of Peace and Conflict Research (BICC / HSFK-PRIF / IFSH / INEF). It has been published annually since 1987. Researchers from various disciplines investigate the realities of conflicts in various countries around the world. Their analyses are the basis for the Editors’ Statement, which summarizes and assesses the results and formulates policy recommendations for peace and security policy in Germany and Europe.