Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-16-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20000216.2.3-014"2
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Mr President, it is a great pleasure for me to address you for the first time on behalf of the Council presidency, particularly in view of the very important role that the European Parliament is bound to play in the near future, given the need to strengthen development policies at European Union level. The subject of the statement that I have the honour of presenting to you today, is the coherence of different Union policies with development policy.
A second aspect worth highlighting underscores the need for EU policy and the policies of the Member States to complement each other more. It is widely known that a significant proportion of aid is today granted under the Member States’ national policies, which are not always complementary or well coordinated. A great deal of the waste and inefficiency associated with aid from the European Union and its Member States is the result of precisely this lack of coordination and complementarity between the actions of individual Member States and the proposals and actions of the European institutions. In this respect it is also absolutely vital that we should do our utmost, as soon as possible, to create stronger mechanisms for ensuring that the policies adopted by the Member States and European Union policies are coordinated and complementary.
The third aspect I would like to highlight is the strengthening and coherence of EU policies, the central theme of today’s debate. Firstly, we are all aware that it is not enough just to improve aid conditions and that there is a need for better coordination with other European Union policies, so that development objectives can be achieved, not merely through aid and support, but also, first and foremost, through a more integrated approach to the various different policies that contribute to the objectives of development. As you know, a Council Resolution was approved, in June 1997, under which the Commission was required to present evaluation reports. The first such report was presented to the Council in May 1999, and it referred to certain aspects of policy coordination, notably in the fields of peace building, food safety, fisheries and migration. But as you will also be aware, we are waiting for a Commission communication on coherence, together with the communication on development policy. Over the coming months, that is to say during the Portuguese Presidency, this debate will of course be enriched by the contributions that the Commission has undertaken to present to us.
It is evident that the scope for achieving coherence between policies will always be limited and it is only natural for there to be some contradictions between policies as these are means of balancing and weighting the contradictory and conflicting interests within the European Union. Only in this way is it possible to manage some degree of contradiction between policies. But, quite apart from this, we would like to emphasise that, if we are to strengthen the coherence of European Union policies in the present circumstances and in the economic situation currently facing the Union, we need to give serious consideration to various issues associated with the dynamics of the European Union itself. By this I mean, of course, the internal dynamics of the European Union. We know that the European Union has its own dynamics, which stem above all from the Treaty of Amsterdam, which has reinforced its political dimension. This inevitably has important consequences for the proposal for coherence in policies relating to development. We will also have to await the outcome of the work of the Intergovernmental Conference as regards enlargement, to see to what extent the internal dynamics of the European Union are directed towards increasing the coherence of its policies, and, as regards development in particular, to what extent it also contributes to appropriate institutional arrangements for achieving this objective.
The second aspect that we need to consider, in relation to the coherence of policies, is development policy in the context of the Union’s foreign policy. We know that the Union has entered a new era as regards its foreign policy, and we know that, with the creation of the High Representative, of the Rapid Reaction Force and of the military crisis management capacity, there is a whole trend towards confirming the status of the European Union that we should not underestimate when we consider the role of development policies. We also know that there are issues associated with political dialogue, with the adoption of common positions or joint actions, with the preparation of joint strategies, with preventive diplomacy, and with the development of regional capacity for crisis prevention and management. There can be no doubt that implementing and developing all these aspects will inevitably make an important contribution to strengthening the role of development policies in the context of the European Union’s foreign policy.
It has to be said that, in approaching development policy in the context of foreign policy, the European Union is bound to go down the same road as many Member States have done with their own development policies in the context of their individual foreign policies. The success of this is bound to involve a need to strengthen decision-making mechanisms and institutional structures relating to the common foreign and security policy, so as to secure better coordination between instruments of development policy and instruments of foreign policy.
In this context, we are convinced that we need to move away from the postcolonial model towards to a truly European model of development aid. I say this because we know that, in Europe, development policy has been very much shaped by the policies of certain Member States, in view of the post-colonial concerns of those states.
The third aspect that needs to be considered is European Union policy and Member States’ policy. Coherence of policies at European level certainly means better coordination of Member States’ policies with the European Union’s development policy. If we do not establish improved mechanisms to ensure coherence between national policies, it will certainly be more difficult to deliberate against a background of greater coherence in European Union development policy.
Ladies and gentlemen, the fourth and final aspect that I would like to draw to your attention, regarding development policy, is, of course, the Development Council. There have been discussions, especially in recent months, about the role the Development Council could play in relation to EU policies. As you know, there is a glaring difference between the status of development policies and other EU policies – you only have to look at the difficult circumstances surrounding the EDF’s financing, or rather lack of financing. It is difficult to imagine achieving greater coherence in the European Union’s policies without the Development Council playing a more active and interventionist role in relation to political decisions, which clearly come under the development banner and which are being dealt with in other Councils, in other decision-making forums, ranging from the Agriculture and Fisheries Councils to the Environment Council. Up to now, the Development Council has not had any opportunity to make its voice heard or to intervene in relation to these decisions.
So without a more active role for the Development Council in the overall coordination of political decision making which, although it directly impacts on the European Union’s development policy, is largely being dealt with outside this decision-making forum, it will certainly be difficult to establish a more coherent European Union policy on development objectives. The views of the European Parliament on this issue too, will certainly be both timely and welcome.
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I shall, of course, give the Commission an opportunity to add to some of the observations that I shall be making. I would like to start by emphasising the need we all feel, at EU level, to reconcile the extraordinary development and progress that we have seen in many areas of life – not least because of the marked technological impetus over recent years, which has benefited people in all walks of life, throughout the world, in terms of well-being and improvements in living conditions – with the fact that, at the same time, there has been a substantial increase in the pronounced imbalances between some regions and geopolitical areas of the world. This endangers the stability of the international system and jeopardises peace. We are all therefore duty-bound to seek to match our policies better to this objective of achieving greater stability and greater balance in the various parts of our planet.
The consequence of all this is a reassessment of development policies in response to the globalisation of economic and financial markets. A serious imbalance in the functioning of these markets has emerged, which has of course made it necessary to make important adjustments, which in turn inevitably mean new options as regards development policies. We will therefore find ourselves on the threshold of a new model for development policies which – and I would like to stress this – will require action on our part in four essential areas:
Firstly, there will be a need for more concerted action between all international players, by which I mean donors, requiring greater coordination, greater coherence and improved links between humanitarian aid and development policies; it will also require strengthening of the multilateral system and greater attention being paid to indebtedness and to financing and development problems. At the same time, however, there will have to be some changes in the framework within which those countries now receiving aid operate, particularly the need to fight corruption and to maintain democracy and good governance as fundamental principles in developing their political systems, together with a need to focus special attention on these countries’ own policies for reducing poverty.
The second aspect of this new model for development policies relates to the need for a more integrated approach to development. This means not just an approach limited to development aid as the sole element of this policy, but a policy that also increasingly takes account of the role of other policies in the spheres of finance, trade and investment. Furthermore, this new model must respect the need for this integrated vision of development to be approached both from a global policy angle and also in the light of the various donor countries’ own policies.
A third aspect of this new model that I would like to emphasise is a policy aimed at achieving our objectives. Since 1995, following a concerted international effort between the main donor states, involving in particular a reflection paper produced by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, it has been possible to establish some important objectives by way of guidelines for development policies, both at national and international level. As you will know, the aim of these objectives is to cut poverty by 50% by 2015, by increasing compulsory schooling, by significantly reducing child mortality rates, and by implementing a raft of social welfare measures with a view to effectively achieving this objective. This would mean moving away from the situation of extreme poverty in which more than a third of the world’s population lives, and moving away from the extremely poor living conditions suffered by over a billion people. This is an extraordinary state of affairs, which certainly means that if this objective is to be achieved the international community as a whole will have to participate and intervene actively.
And that brings me to the fourth aspect of this new development model that I would like to emphasise. Particularly in recent years, development policies have been regarded as an increasingly global matter, and yet there is apparently a lack of strong international leadership. The concerted actions of the United Nations institutions have played an important role here, as has the Bretton Woods system. I have in mind, in particular, the important impetus given to this debate by the World Bank, especially through its Comprehensive Framework document, and by the International Monetary Fund, where, for the first time, an institution of this kind has put the problem of reducing poverty at the centre of its policy guidelines and has forged a hitherto unimaginable link, for a body of this type, between debt relief and poverty. This new role for international organisations on development issues is also a good reason for us to consider the role of the European Union in this context.
The Portuguese Presidency has highlighted the need for the European Union to combine its highly important international role as the main donor with a leading role – and a more active one – in this movement to reform international development policies, and to create greater scope for coordination, in particular with the United Nations system and the Bretton Woods system.
If we are to strengthen the European Union’s role in international development policies, we believe that it is basically necessary to take three kinds of action. Firstly, we need to make the EU’s development policy more effective. As you know, an exercise was carried out in 1995 involving an overall assessment of development policies, and the results of this overall assessment exercise were presented during the German Presidency. The main conclusions emphasised the need for a more coherent EU policy and a more strategic overall EU approach to development issues. The key aspects were the need for greater coordination and greater complementarity between policies, the need for harmonisation and simplification of the present organisational framework for the Union’s present cooperation policies, the need to make the EU’s aid management more efficient and, in particular, to review its mechanisms for intervention, and also the need to reinforce the assessment system and to introduce greater transparency into the process for granting aid."@en1
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