whereas the Foreign Affairs Council, when adopting the EU Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law, emphasised the importance of dealing effectively with the legacy of serious violations by supporting appropriate accountability mechanisms, and underlined the key role which the International Criminal Court (ICC) can play in cases where the state or states in question are unable or unwilling to exercise their jurisdiction; whereas the EU Guidelines commit the ‘appropriate Council working groups’ to monitoring situations where IHL may apply and, in such cases, to recommending ...[+++]action to promote compliance with IHL (paragraph 15(a)).

9. Condemns Russian’s aggression against Crimea as a grave violation under international law of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and rejects Russia’s ‘fait accompli’ policy in its foreign relations; considers the annexation of Crimea to be illegal; refuses to recognise Russia’s de facto rule in the peninsula, and endorses the decision to prohibit imports of goods from Crimea and Sevastopol which do not have a Ukrainian certificate;

2. An investment firm that operates an internal matching system which executes client orders in shares, depositary receipts, ETFs, certificates and other similar financial instruments on a multilateral basis must ensure it is authorised as an MTF under Directive 2014/./EU * and comply with all relevant provisions pertaining to such authorisations.

In addition, in order to ensure that multilateral trading with respect to shares, depositary receipts, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), certificates and other similar financial instruments is properly regulated, an investment firm that operates an internal matching system on a multilateral basis should be authorised as an MTF.

7. Stresses that a comprehensive understanding of CFSP covers all areas of foreign policy, including the progressive framing of a Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) that might lead to a common defence, with an emphasis on pursuing coherence and consistency whilst respecting the specificity of each component of external action; reiterates that such an approach to developing EU foreign policy must be based on the principles and objectives established in Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union, meaning that EU external action must be inspired by the promotion and protection of EU values, such as the respect for human rights, free ...[+++]dom, democracy and the rule of law; stresses, at the same time, the importance of closer coordination between the internal and external dimensions of the EU‘s security policies, which should be reflected in the external action of the Union;

It is clear that we can do more to promote the coherence of our external action, not only in relation to foreign policy and common defence, but also in relation to the various internal policy instruments with an external dimension, as well as in areas in which the Commission has a special role to play, such as development aid, international trade and the neighbourhood policy, for instance.