Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-16-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20000216.2.3-015"2
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"Let me start by saying something about the successfully concluded negotiations between the EU and ACP countries. I would like to remark that it was a very positive experience taking part in those negotiations. I saw Member States working as a team, which was indeed a wonderful experience.
This approach will lead us to a fully WTO compatible regime. Economic operators will be more inclined to establish closer relations with their ACP partners. Domestic and foreign investment will grow and more know-how and technology will be transferred, all of which will boost the ACP countries’ competitiveness and ease their gradual integration into the world economy. In addition, the agreements with the EU will act as an anchor. They will lock in the economic reforms, just as national and economic reforms will be stabilised by both parties’ commitments under the agreements. The rationale behind this new approach is also based on the idea that open trade policies combined with social development policies will lead to economic growth and poverty reduction.
Another important aspect is the improvement of the EU’s trade regime for all least-developed countries, 39 of which are actually in the ACP group. This process will take place in the coming five years so that, by 2005, the LDCs’ exporters will have free access for essentially all their products on the EU market.
As regards the volume of the next EDF, the EU has made its financial proposal. It is based on the principle of reconciling the need to maintain a substantial amount of financial resources in a period of limited official development assistance budgets with the need to make Community aid more effective.
Today about EUR 9.5 billion of previous EDF resources are uncommitted. The EU is committed to mobilising these remaining balances, plus the new EDF resources, over a seven-year period, that is to say, before the entry into force of the next financial protocol. This will enable the Community to substantially increase annual flows of commitments and payments during this period. We are thus not moving into a period in the coming years of reduced activity, we are moving into a period of increased activity.
Such a commitment entails an in-depth reform of procedures and implementation modalities on both sides. There is a very real link between the reform process in the Commission as such, and our ability to deliver on the ground which is the basis of the deal with the ACP countries.
Turning to our development policy, I would say that the global context has changed drastically. The marginalisation of many economies, increased poverty in the world, the need for better management of environmental interdependence, the destabilising effects of migration and the worrying consequences of armed conflicts and pandemic diseases are all major concerns.
It is within this changing global framework that we have to position ourselves. Fortunately evaluations of EC aid give us a meaningful tool to improve what we are doing and also hopefully to meet the challenges I have just mentioned.
To focus on the input coming from the evaluations, I would mention the following problems: the objections of Community policy are too numerous and too vague and this adversely affects coherence. This is due to the complexity of our own structures, but also to very real inconsistencies between sector policies and interests in the Member States.
The Commission has an aid system that is too complex and fragmented in terms of instruments, procedures and institutional mechanisms. Often policies are more determined by the instruments available, than by policy objectives and clearly-defined priorities. Human resources are too thin in relation to the volume of aid that we are supposed to manage. On average, to manage $US 10 million of aid there are 2.9 staff at the Commission, compared with 4.3 at the World Bank and between 4 and 9 in major Member States. This is a real problem: there are too many different financial instruments, each with its own characteristics and in particular a series of different budget headings. This is difficult to reconcile with the needs of an effective management system.
In order to face and solve these problems the Community needs to engage in an effective dialogue with Member States and Parliament. It is absolutely crucial that we tackle the coherence issue in a realistic and pragmatic way, which means holding the debate in the appropriate institutional framework, that is, the Council and Parliament.
There was also deep satisfaction on both sides when this was over, not just because it was over, but because we all knew that we had achieved something together, the EU and the 71 ACP countries. That is something that the world needs and is a very good signal in the framework of the whole discussion of globalisation.
The lack of concerted action among the 15 Member States themselves and between them and the Community also needs to be addressed. By focusing the Community's development policy on internationally agreed targets and strategies we will pave the way for better complementarity with the Member States. This is very much the line also just presented by Minister Amado. When we talk policies nowadays, we engage in a process of convergence. This is part of the solution.
We are in the process of formulating new policy guidelines and we need to identify priority areas for Community action. Everything has become more and more complex. This is also true of development cooperation. No single donor is in a position to address the whole spectrum of themes, ranging from macro-economic issues to the regulatory framework or from sectoral policies to a variety of new cross-cutting themes such as gender, environment, good governance and institutional reforms.
It is important to find flexible mechanisms that accommodate a division of labour according to the expertise and capacity of the various donors in each developing country. This should be done at Member State level and should lead to the formulation of sector policies for Community action. This is where we want to go.
To identify the EC's priority areas of support, account has to be taken of the Community's specific features in relation to the Member States and to international institutions. I will mention just a few: our ability to combine development policy with trade policy and to ensure synergies between aid and economic cooperation; our neutrality and defence of overall Community interests; the fact that we represent a critical mass and are able to do relatively large jobs compared to what individual Member States can normally do. Also, our presence on the ground: basically, I find the biggest value we represent is the very fact that being a successful regional cooperation endeavour ourselves, we are seen as a neutral, welcome partner for this experiment world-wide – something which nobody else can claim to be.
It is vital to make Community policy more effective and to develop a more operational strategic framework. It is this dual challenge that the Commission has to take up, by framing in the months ahead a proposal for a general policy statement. We will launch a broad and open consultation process in order to get the views of all the different parties interested. I see the process not quite but almost as important as the content and we will put all our resources into participating actively and we invite everybody to participate.
Parallel to this we have also embarked on the process of improving coherence and clarifying and bringing to the surface and into the open the real or imaginary problems we are having in this respect. This will be an ongoing process which I see as a kind of continued quality control effort and I invite Parliament to participate in this ongoing effort to improve the coherence of what we are doing.
I shall outline some of the major innovations in the new agreement. We explicitly address corruption; we establish a framework for dealing with the problem of immigration for the first time ever. We promote participatory approaches, we ensure the consultation of civil society on the reforms and policies to be supported by the EU. We refocus development policies on poverty reduction strategies. We base the allocation of funds not only on an assessment of each country's needs, but also of its policy performance. We create an investment facility to support the development of the private sector. We rationalise instruments and introduce a new system of rolling programming, allowing the Community and the beneficiary country to regularly adjust their cooperation programme. We decentralise administrative and, in some cases, financial responsibilities to local level with the aim of making cooperation more effective. We improve the policy framework for trade and investment development. We enhance cooperation in all areas important to trade, including new issues such as labour standards and the linkages between environment and trade. After Seattle I am sure you will appreciate the significance of these agreements.
Let me turn to some of the more important points. Firstly the agreement on political issues. The new agreement will entail a firm commitment on both sides to good governance as a fundamental and positive element of the partnership, a subject for regular dialogue in an area which enjoys active Community support. Secondly, a new procedure has been drawn up for cases of violations of human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law. In comparison with the current procedure, the new one puts more emphasis on the responsibility of the state concerned and allows for greater flexibility in the consultation process, with a view to conducting an effective dialogue leading to measures to be taken to redress the situation. In cases of special urgency involving serious violations of one of these essential elements, measures will be taken immediately and the other party will be notified.
Thirdly, the EU and the ACP have also agreed on a new specific procedure to be launched in serious cases of corruption. This is a real innovation, both in the EU/ACP context and in international relations in general. This procedure will be applied, not only in cases of corruption involving EDF money, but also more widely in any country where the EC is financially involved and where corruption constitutes an obstacle to development. It is thus not confined to EC activities. This is a very important aspect, taking into account the fundability of public finances. By adopting such a provision in the partnership agreement, the EU and the ACP States are together sending a clear and positive signal that will doubtless be appreciated by European taxpayers and hopefully also by European investors.
Another new theme in the ACP-EU agreement is migration. We have reached a balanced agreement on cooperation in this area. This new dimension to the partnership agreement reflects the guidelines espoused by the EU in accordance with the Treaty of Amsterdam and with the conclusions of the European Council in Tampere in Finland in October 1999.
The European Union undertakes to develop and implement an immigration and asylum policy founded on the principle of partnership with the originating countries and regions. The agreement concluded with the ACP countries paves the way for new initiatives, in particular on the rights of third country citizens within the EU, and measures facilitating their integration. We also agreed on provisions to address questions related to illegal immigration. The EU and the ACP states will initiate the process aimed ultimately at defining, within a framework to be negotiated with each and every ACP country, the ways and means of repatriating immigrants illegally present on the territories of each party. This also covers persons from third countries and stateless persons.
These very innovative approaches provide a good opportunity to improve governance. The agreement also offers a good framework to underpin the mutually reinforcing effects of trade cooperation and development aid. We have agreed on a process to establish new trading arrangements that will pursue trade liberalisation between the parties and to formulate provisions on trade-related matters. We have met the concerns of the ACP states as far as the time-frame of the trade negotiations is concerned.
Negotiations will start no later than 2002. This two-year preparatory period will be used to strengthen regional integration processes and the ACP countries’ capacity to conduct trade negotiations. A six-year period is programmed for these negotiations. We will take account of the economic and social constraints of the ACP countries in two ways: firstly, through human and social development policies to accompany economic and trade reforms and, secondly, by helping the ACP states to become active players in the international economic and trade system through capacity-building and cooperation in multilateral forums."@en1
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