The Vienna Conference - Opening Address
Dr. Heinz Fischer, President of the Austrian Parliament

Dear fellow Speakers and Members of Parliaments,
Your Excellencies of the Diplomatic Corps,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear friends,

It is with greatest pleasure that I welcome you to the opening of the Vienna conference on "European - Southern African Cooperation in a Globalising World". This conference is being hosted by the Austrian Parliament in cooperation with the European Network of Information and Action on Southern Africa, and as I was able to gather from the most impressive list of participants it brings together most distinguished Speakers and Members of Parliaments from both the member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the European Community, from the European Parliament, as well as a most welcome large number of representatives from civil society of both regions.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

as some of you might recall, European Union and SADC governments, at their first meeting in Berlin 1994, had agreed to hold meetings at the ministerial level every two years, geographically alternating between the European Union and Southern Africa. Therefore, a second Ministerial Conference was held in Windhoek in october 1996, and the third one is currently being prepared for November 1998, in less than a month from now, to be held under the auspices of the current Austrian EU Presidency here in Vienna.

Maybe a bit less known to most of you is the fact that at the Windhoek Meeting in 1996, it was repeatedly stressed that the so-called "Berlin Initiative" should not be restricted solely to biannual meetings between SADC and EU governments. To quote here from the final document of this meeting, it was agreed (quote) "to also bringing together ordinary citizens from SADC and EU member states. This is the best way to foster a spirit of friendship, solidarity and understanding that will facilitate cultural exchanges at all levels." And indeed, what better way to deepening and broadening the political dialogue than to involve the elected representatives of the people, as well as the people themselves, in this crucial exercise.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, constitutes then also the motivation and background not only for this impressive gathering today, but also for a wide variety of events and meetings between artists and cultural representatives from the Southern African region and the Austrian public, which will take place between now and the time of the upcoming Ministerial conference.
And to add here as a footnote: as the President of the Austrian Parliament I must say I am very happy and proud to see that this body of freely elected representatives, together with members of the civil society, have jointly undertaken this initiative, and I will not hesitate to express my hope and wish that this gathering and these cultural events will serve as a model for similar NGO and parliamentarian activities at future SADC-EU Ministerial Conferences due in the year 2000 and thereafter.

During the coming two-and-a-half days you will focus on EU - SADC relations as they evolve in a changing global political and economic environment. Therefore, issues arising from the forthcoming negotiations on a post-Lomé arrangement, the new WTO round, debt management initiatives, structural adjustment programmes and current talks on a Multilateral Agreement on Investment will be among the topics to be discussed. And you will also be addressing the crucially important issue of the roots of conflicts and instability in the region, a topic with which we member-states of the Europeans Union ourselves are deeply confronted wth in our own immediate vicinity these days - if not to say in these hours.
Ladies and Gentlemen, because of the crucial correlation between democracy and societal/individual well-being, I strongly believe that all of the subjects to be covered by this conference are also of crucial importance for the development of democracy and the advancement of human rights not only in the SADC region, but indeed for Africa as a whole. And I equally strongly believe that we, the member states of the European Union - not only its governments, but very much also its parliaments and its societies - , that we all have to fill a historical mandate to reconstruct the bridges to our African brothers and sisters in a spirit of mutual respect, understanding, friendship, and, I should add with some emphasis, also on greater generosity on our part.

I wish you much success in your deliberations, and let me again welcome you to Vienna and into these halls of the Austrian Parliament. Thank you, dear friends.

Vienna, 12.10.1998