335 Cesáreo Gutiérrez Espada The responsibility to protect and the right of veto in the Security Council: some recent examples mechanism were to be accepted, the renouncement of the right of veto would be applied automatically. The comments made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the specific suggestion by the President of the Republic to the General Assembly of the United Nations is also enlightening: “Once the Secretary-General has given his opinion, the code of conduct would be applied immediately”33. B) Self-limitation of the right of veto by the permanent members of the Security Council is only partial in the French proposal, as it would only be used in the case of mass crimes. Of course, here it would also be necessary to reach an agreement, for example: as of how many victims should we consider it to be a mass crime? We have already explained that France seems open to the negotiation of an alternative proposal. The Deputy Permanent Representative of France, speaking to the Security Council, left the decision on this subject open, referring to the agreement between the permanent members of the Council and citing some international texts that could be of interest. France proposed that the decision of establishing when a mass crime has been committed be left to an authority external to the Security Council itself, and therefore, external to the permanent members as well. And France suggested that this authority should be the Secretary-General of the United Nations, under article 99 of the UN Charter (which authorises him to “bring to the attention of the Security Council” any situation that “in his opinion” could “place peacekeeping and international security in danger”). However, the Secretary-General could not act on his own initiative, but rather at the request of 50 Member States of the United Nations. C) However, the French proposal also includes an important and wide-reaching safeguard clause which could be implemented by calling upon a sense of “realism”. The compromise that the permanent members of the Council would take on: “would exclude cases in which the vital national interests of a permanent member of the Council would be placed in danger” 34. Finally it should be noted that the French proposal suggests an “informal” reform of the right of veto, whereby its adoption by the permanent members of the Council would not demand formal amendment of the Charter, with everything that that would entail. Speaking on the 7 November 2013, the Deputy Permanent Representative of France explained that the suggested code of conduct: “would not imply a reform of the UN Security Council” 35. 33 FABIUS, L.: “Suspender el derecho de veto…” cit., p. 1. 34 FABIUS, L.: “Suspender el derecho de veto…” cit., p. 1. 35 “United Nations- Reform of the Security Council- Intervention by permanent representative…” cit, p. 2.
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