Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-20-Speech-3-126"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000920.11.3-126"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, the fine report which my compatriot, Mrs Ferrer, is presenting us with today addresses a problem which has been highlighted on numerous occasions and, at the same time, the urgent need to resolve it and open up new avenues in the relations between the united Europe and the third world.
The problem I am referring to is the notable lack of harmony and coordination in development cooperation action and policy between the European Union and its Member States, on the one hand, and between some of the Member States themselves, on the other. What has been described and condemned by many authoritative voices and, in particular, by organisations that work in this area – and also by our own Parliament – is that over the years the different Member States have been acting independently in the field of cooperation, often according to individual national views and interests, sometimes honourable and sometimes less so, but in any event without any significant effort to be coherent and fairly distribute roles, not even in terms of providing mutual information and even less in terms of coordination. To sum up, there has been no effort to act rationally and efficiently so that the available resources, which are always limited, are not wasted and instead yield the best possible results.
Furthermore, until very recently, the required effort has not been made to reasonably coordinate Community policy in this field with the policies that at the same time were being carried out by the 15 Member States, although this is certainly not exclusive to the area which we are dealing with. It was truly regrettable to see how Community actions were being implemented, sometimes without even an awareness of what each of the Member States was doing in relation to the relevant countries or sectors. The result was, and to a large extent still is, so far, disparate actions, overlapping in many cases, and even the duplication and incompatibility of what each of us is doing. This is absurd and is something of a disaster.
This situation was naturally unsustainable and was one more problem to resolve, but that need has become all the more blatant and urgent given that the very process of European construction, the reforms and the progress of the Union, are making it essential that we act on the international stage as one country, with one voice, and given that it is an undeniable priority for the viability of our project that we implement a common foreign and security policy.
In our opinion, anything we can do in the field of development policy is but a substantial part of this foreign and security policy. That is what Mrs Ferrer demonstrates, and the heading of her report highlights the key concept of complementarity. This is not the first time we have discussed this issue in Parliament, of course. The faults which we had noted were too obvious not to have been raised in previous debates. Nevertheless, by taking account of a situation which is particularly pressing, but also particularly favourable, we are taking an important step forward and we are doing so at a time when both the Commission and the Council seem convinced that we have to adopt specific measures in order to leave behind the previous situation and produce the coherence which will enable the resources which Europe intends for development cooperation to be more substantial, in both qualitative and quantitative terms.
Furthermore, in this way, we will achieve for Europe a much more decisive role in the challenge, which is of such concern to us, of creating a fairer, more balanced and therefore more stable world."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples