Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-16-Speech-3-019"
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"Mr President, let us be clear from the outset: when it comes to cooperation, coherence is far from being the watchword. The Treaties provide for the European Union to help developing countries to develop but, as the previous speakers have explained so well, there are various distortions to these declarations.
And what about agriculture and the environment? Still more problems, still more areas of incoherence which I might have highlighted, not to mention research, emigration or health. In short, we claim that we want to help developing countries and, at the same time, we encourage the liberalisation of trade, which we acknowledge runs counter to that very objective. I say it again, the European Union’s cooperation and development policy is not coherent. and on behalf of the Green Group I call on Parliament, the institutions and the Commission to make a joint effort, at long last, to put some coherence into our policy.
The first area of incoherence is the lack of consultation between the Union and the Member States on individual cooperation policies. This gives rise to serious malfunctions, because some Community programmes duplicate national programmes, whereas they might have helped other projects about which nothing is done. And let us not forget that the de facto neo-colonial policy of certain Member States does nothing to help the countries which they are supposedly helping to develop.
The second area of incoherence is aid to authoritarian regimes. We state that good governance and an end to corruption are mandatory but we continue to pour hundreds of thousands of euros into Swiss bank accounts via the portfolios of a number of Heads of State.
The third area of incoherence is human rights. We say that we want to protect human rights. We encourage developing countries to respect human rights. We even adopt numerous resolutions condemning every violation of human rights. We ally ourselves with demonstrations and international campaigns. And yet, at the same time, we allow the arms trade to proliferate and do not even attempt to limit the trade in the most atrocious forms of arms such as anti-personnel mines. Nor do we do much to really prevent human rights violations.
The fourth area of incoherence in the European Union’s cooperation policy is this: how do you expect to help development by pillaging the natural resources of the people you are helping. The European Union must leave fish for local fishermen to feed local populations instead of systematically destroying maritime resources through intensive fisheries. We must leave raw materials so that local manufacturers can process them. I will not even mention oil; we are all aware of the policy of groups such as Elf and Total in Africa.
Furthermore, and this will perhaps soon be the fifth area of incoherence, we demand respect for biodiversity, for example so that everyone can produce from their own seeds and preserve the richness of nature; but at the same time, and this was apparent during recent negotiations, we force ACP countries to sign TRIPS agreements. These agreements risk being extended to living organisms, which would mean the death of biodiversity and the return of de facto slavery for small-scale farmers in the south, at the hands of the multinationals.
And yet, and this is the sixth area of incoherence, we do not defend the application of the current Treaties. On the one hand, we vote for a budget line for the fight against AIDS and, on the other hand, we do nothing to ensure compliance with mandatory licences within the framework of the very same TRIPS, despite the fact that this would allow developing countries to produce their own medicines and halt the AIDS massacre.
Similarly, during the WTO negotiations, at a time when, to quote the second paragraph of the Schwaiger report, “the current trade liberalisation process has not yet brought significant benefits for large parts of the population of developing countries, especially the poor”, the European Union continues to defend the liberalisation of trade and intends to put an end to the system of favouring ACP countries, albeit with a transitional period of several years, instead of strengthening it, especially for the poorest countries.
The eighth area of incoherence is of a political and practical nature. We are always saying think globally, act locally. And yet we disregard local development agencies and prefer to negotiate with national governments and subsidise northern NGOs at the expense of local programmes and southern NGOs."@en1
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