Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-13-Speech-1-082"
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"en.20000313.4.1-082"2
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"Mr President, as Commissioner Nielson has already stated, this debate marks the inauguration of the new competences of the Committee on Development and Cooperation in the field of codecision. The aim of the regulation under discussion today is to establish measures designed to promote the conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests in developing countries, in order to guarantee the funding necessary to maintain and make progress with the actions and projects which have been under way for this purpose since the adoption of Regulation 3062, valid until December 1999.
This is the financial instrument by means of which the Union can fulfil the obligations arising from the Agreement on biodiversity, the Framework Agreement on climate change and the Agreement on the fight against desertification. All these agreements indicate that developing countries must be supported in the search for solutions to the problem of their forest resources.
Between 1990 and 1995, over 56 million hectares of forest, distributed unevenly in various parts of the world, were lost but, without a doubt, this particularly affected developing countries as a result of the increased amount of land used for agricultural purposes, the construction of infrastructures, or due to natural disasters and fires.
We are therefore facing a problem of the first magnitude, not only for developing countries, but also for the whole planet and all the living beings that inhabit it, a problem that Parliament has already spoken about at first reading at the end of the previous legislature on 5 May 1999. Since then, a long, and sometimes difficult, negotiation process has been taking place within the Council, which did not reach a common position until December 1999, and between the Council, the Commission and Parliament itself, in search of the necessary consensus. All this took place under the restrictions caused by the approval of a budget which imposed limitations in various respects, and in particular the need to allocate funding to implement the special plan for the reconstruction of Kosovo.
At first reading, Parliament approved a total of 34 amendments of which the Council, in its common position, has totally or partially taken up 18. Of the remaining 16, some, and in particular Amendments Nos 5 and 6, are no longer relevant following the interinstitutional agreement on the 2000 budget. The debate and negotiations that we have held with the Council and the Commission have focused on three topics: the budget, dates and comitology.
The rapporteur particularly wishes to highlight the hard work and flexibility shown by all concerned in the search for a consensus on the budget, so that, from an initial figure of EUR 9 million from the B7-6201 line, which implied a total of EUR 73 million for the whole period, we have reached an agreement that implies the provision of EUR 249 million for the next seven years as a whole, starting with the EUR 30 million already stipulated in the budget for the year 2000. Based on this budgetary agreement, which includes an agreement on dates, the differences have focused on aspects of comitology derived from the historic positions of Parliament and the Council itself that, with a view to the future, in my opinion – and not to insist on the problems made manifest in Mr Wijkman's intervention – I believe that they should be revised in an interinstitutional agreement in order to speed up the parliamentary legislative procedure and make it more efficient.
Finally, I wish to request the support of the House with regard to Amendments Nos 1, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12, and a negative vote for the others, which, if successful, would break the agreement reached during the discussions with the Commission and the Council, which would oblige the whole negotiating process to begin again, paralyse some of the actions and projects under way and undoubtedly cause serious problems in the policy of conservation and rehabilitation of the tropical forests that we are trying to develop."@en1
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