The title I chose for the talk I was kindly invited to give today is "Raising the profile of the European Union Humanitarian aid policy".

Before I move on to explain why we need such a higher profile and what we might do about about it, let me clear the stage of some recurrent misconceptions and misunderstandings.

It is quite common when discussing of humanitarian policies to end up lamenting how much more effective our policies would be, if only we were able to put in place functioning mechanisms of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention.

I agree with this diagnosis. Of course, it is much more costly - and less efficient - to intervene "ex post", once a crisis is declared. But I have strong reservations when the prognosis is to have ECHO - the European Community Humanitarian Office - take care of conflict prevention.

Conflict prevention is a political exercise. Humanitarian action cannot function as a substitute to political action. It is through the latter that we should deal with, and eventually solve, crises and conflicts.

Is the Union as such, as opposed to the foreign offices of its member states, capable of facing up to such complex political tasks of conflict-prevention - including the willingness to use force if and when necessary? The shorthand answer is no.

To place the dilemmas of our humanitarian policy in their proper context, one catchword of times past may be useful. This word is containment.

Throughout the cold war, the containment of the Soviet Union's global ambitions has known setbacks as well as successes. The containment of local conflicts at regional and sub-regional level has instead been - by a large - a constant success.

In almost any corner of the world, when conflict broke out, the two superpowers rushed to take sides. Outside the scope of the Geneva Conventions and the activity of the Red Cross, there was little or no drive of the international community towards humanitarian aid. The most spectacular initiatives in this field were, in fact, essentially the result of mobilisation by the civic society (such as fund-raising with concerts for Ethiopia and Bangladesh).

Moscow and Washington provided to the parties in conflict all the aid that mattered, i.e. their political, economic and military assistance. Wars and their aftermath were as bloodyas ever, and possibly more: think of Cambodia, for example. But there was little or nothing the external world could do, lest of escalating a local conflict into a major East-West confrontation.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, there are many things we Europeans can do. We can and do provide emergency aid to the victims of conflicts and man-made disasters. But we remain ruefully unable to prevent conflicts from breaking out in the first place. Or, as the case of former Yugoslavia clearly shows, to put an and to them once they rage.

As you all know, this has to do with the aknowledged shortcomings of the Commom Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) foreseen by the Maastricht Treaty.

It is not only a matter of political will - particularly the will to transfer decision-making power from the capitals of EU member states to Brussels. Even if the Union wanted to assume a leading role in addressing some of those crisis situations, it would lack the means to do so.

In this field, there is no institutional mechanisms allowing the EU executive to play the same role of initiative as in economic and legislative matters. And no obvious substitute thereof has yet been found.

Similarly, the CFSP remains desperately in need of a structure that, in the light of our common long-term interests, systematically weighs risks and options at stake in foreign events.

Thus, there is currently no way we can square the circle of humanitarian aid with what comes upstream (conflict prevention) and downstream (conflict resolution and rehabilitation) without a body the rough equivalent of the U.S. National Security Council: a structure that gathers information and comes up with a menu of options for decision-makers to choose from.

I hope the approaching exercise of the 1996 inter-governmental conference will be able to repair this state of affairs.

In the meantime, though, the victims of countless conflicts throughout the world cannot wait the emergence of a Common Foreign and Security Policy true to its name.

In other words, the clumsiness of our present foreign policy-making process must not become a convenient excuse for humanitarian inaction.

ECHO mandate spells out three principles: aid should be provided to the needy on a neutral, impartial, and apolitical basis. So much as I regret the limits of the Union's CFSP in its present form, I also believe we should continue to uphold these principles as a reasonable guide for action.

The action we indeed initiated can be summed up by a few figures. In 1994, the international community as a whole has disbursed little more than ECU 3 billion in official humanitarian aid. Of that, the European Union - Commission and member states combined - provided some two thirds. ECHO as such provided ECU 764 million, up from ECU 600 million in 1993 and ECU 393 million in 1992.

As many of you know, generally speaking ECHO does not provide aid directly but through UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In 1994, these implemented ECHO-funded emergency aid programs in more than 60 countries.

The last thing I intend to do here is to boast about this outstanding financial and managerial prowess displayed by ECHO. On the contrary, these figures set off alarm bells in my head.

First, there is a problem of visibility. Since it is the NGOs and the UN agencies, rather than ECHO itself, which show the flag on the terrain, the public does not perceive the realrange of our efforts.

Please note that this does not mean that we have any intention to follow the trend to "CNNize" the crises - i.e. that only those crises which get media attention exist. To the contrary, we want to make the European taxpayer more aware that her/his money is properly spent to relieve the victims of as many crises as possible - including the forgotten ones (the so-called "crises orphelines").

To address the visibility problem, we are now explicitly asking our partners to display our logo alongside theirs whenever, and wherever, they carry out actions that are ECHO-funded. We have also decided to allocate 1% of our budget to a media campaign specifically designed to increase our visibility - a key factor for shoring up the political support for our humanitarian action.

This leads me right away into a second problem. If you take into account that the whole Community exercise in this field started 20 years ago with a grant of ECU 5 million to aid the victims of natural catastrophes, it becomes clear that the demand on resources went through the roof. It is still strong. But I fail to see at the moment where the financial resources will come from to sustain such humanitarian spending levels from European Union funds in the months ahead.

And I increasingly have the sense that the Union has already reached the limit of what is tolerable. We have, regrettably, become accustomed to the phenomenon called "development aid fatigue". I fear that now we are about to see "humanitarian aid fatigue" strike.

The political and financial sustainability of our humanitarian efforts is compounded by the dilemmas which go hand in hand with the provision of aid to parties in an ongoing conflict. In the former Yugoslavia, as well as in Rwanda, those parties do as much as they can to subordinate whatever aid we provide to their political goals. They detour aid and use it to feed their troops, while at the same time obstructing the work of relief workers.

The feeling creeps in that humanitarian aid is in the end mainly an encouragement to combatants to persevere in their acts of violence. Both in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, therefore, the arguments in favor of a reduction in our aid financing become stronger and stronger. I can only say in this regard that the political pros and cons of such a course of action need to be carefully weighed.

Another issue that needs clarification is whether there is scope for a substantial role of the Western European Union to back up our humanitarian efforts. There is a whole spate of WEU and EU official communiques which explicitly call for such a role. The WEU planning cell set up following the Petersberg declaration of 1992 was charged inter alia with studying options for humanitarian contingencies.

Yet, to date, there is very little to show in practice - at least from the point of view of my office. The WEU could support the Union humanitarian actions with transport, logistics and communications. I would also be personally delighted to see WEU troops replace the Zaireans and the Pakistanis in providing security to refugee camps.

As I see it, one could hardly imagine more symbolic initiatives than these to raise the political profile of the EU humanitarian aid policy, and of the Union as such.

Unfortunately, however, this is a clear case in which we have difficulties in making deeds follow our words. The issue is up for the IGC to consider. The same can be said of the communitarization of humanitarian aid policy: do not forget that it presently goes without any mention in the Union's treaty, which means that the Humanitarian is stilllacking a "constitutional basis".

Well, let me stop here. I realize I offered you more questions than answers. Perhaps we can find some of these answers together in the rest of our discussion today.