Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-14-Speech-3-328"
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"en.20000614.12.3-328"2
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".
Mr President, as the rapporteur, Mr Marset, has said – and we support his words and his report – Hurricane Mitch has been the worst natural disaster in the history of Central America.
The human losses number more than 10 000 deaths; almost another 10 000 have disappeared and more than 2 million people have been affected; the material damage amounts to more than EUR 5 billion which is equivalent to 10% of the GDP of Central America. A significant part of the economic and social infrastructure has been destroyed and there has been a great reduction in the region’s capacity for production and export in the short and medium term.
The countries most affected, Honduras and Nicaragua, are the poorest in the region. The destructive effect of Mitch was exacerbated by deforestation and the lack of an adequate system of flood control, which demonstrated once again that environmental degradation affects the poorest most and highlights the intrinsic link between poverty and environmental deterioration.
As the Commission has said, the consequences of Mitch will considerably reduce the results of the efforts towards economic recovery and investment made there during the last decade by the European Union.
In April 1999, the Commission approved a special action plan, provided with EUR 250 million, which this Parliament fully supports in the terms in which it was approved. With regard to the model for implementing this programme, the Committee on Development and Cooperation supports option 1 proposed by the Commission. Only in the event that it is not possible to carry out option 1 as a result of a lack of sufficient human resources, could option 2 be considered valid, by means of the contracting of highly qualified European experts.
As draftsman of the Committee on Development and Cooperation I must not end without asking, once again, for the cancellation of the foreign debt of the Central American countries, an initiative which must be dealt with by the European Union as a whole and in a coordinated fashion and not only by certain Member States acting on individual and particular initiatives.
Lastly, I believe it is also necessary to ask, within the strategic reconstruction plan, for the proposal of measures aimed at increasing credits from the European Investment Bank in that region."@en1
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