Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-149"
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"en.20000517.9.3-149"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Tajani, Mr van Velzen and Mr Poettering for their valuable, substantial contributions to this debate. I also welcome the mandate conferred on me by the European People’s Party to present such a major topic as the poor countries’ debt, which is stifling the economy of the world’s poorest developing countries.
The scale of this issue is global, and it involves all the civilised, democratic countries which are helplessly standing by, watching the constant growth of the debt of poor countries, which now have to set aside an average of 40% of their annual budget to finance it. Every year, the debt increases by approximately 12%, and it has risen from USD 110 billion in the 80s to its present value of USD 350 billion.
Parliament has attempted to deal with the issue on more than one occasion, but it has never appeared to find satisfactory solutions. This year, on account of it being a Jubilee Year, the Holy See and other quarters are calling for the substantial reduction, if not total cancellation, of the international debt in such a way as to facilitate the integration of the most indebted countries into the world production and commercial trade circuit. The UN Secretary-General also fervently appealed, on 3 April last, to the donor countries and international financial institutions to cancel all the official debts of the highly indebted poor countries from their accounts as a millennium gesture.
A similar appeal was made by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but the time for appeals has passed. It is facts that are important now. If we analyse the situation, we realise that, on the one hand, we are talking about an almost irrecoverable debt and, on the other, that in return for cancelling that debt, we can demand greater respect for human rights, greater democracy and social actions benefiting poor communities – improving conditions for children, the elderly and the disabled. In addition, we would be stemming migration flows, which, quite apart from being a problem for the migrants’ countries of origin, are, above all, a problem for the host countries.
Therefore, I would ask whether the Council is aware of all the initiatives which have hitherto been adopted by each individual country of the Union to reduce or cancel the debt of highly indebted poor countries, and whether it would be possible for a résumé to be produced showing the practical actions which have been undertaken by these countries and the commitments made, to prove that these initiatives are not just mere political vote-winning manoeuvres, as they all too often appear to be.
Finally, considering that there is a clear need for a common foreign policy displaying Europe as a coherent system capable of undertaking united initiatives, does the Commission not feel that it would be appropriate to create a structure to study this issue, which would work together with the local Churches, NGOs and civil society and act upon the conclusions reached? This would, I feel, be a different way of interpreting the meaning of the millennium, this time in the name of solidarity between communities."@en1
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