Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-31-Speech-3-087"
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"en.20010131.4.3-087"2
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". – Mr President, it gives me very great pleasure to participate in this debate on the Mediterranean today. I am particularly grateful to the two rapporteurs, Mrs Muscardini and Mr Naïr, for the excellent work that they have done in preparing their two reports. It has been an extremely good debate. It is personally rather a disappointment that many of those who were able to find time in their busy diaries to take part in the debate were not able to find time to hear very much of the debate or even to wait until the end to hear the responses. It is, I guess, a sort of discourtesy on my part to reply to people who ask serious questions but who are not able to stay to hear the response, so I will not do that. I will just respond to people who have been able to stay until the end, which in fact gives the debate some meaning.
Economic and financial matters are, of course, at the heart of the partnership though they are not, as several speakers pointed out, anything like the whole of that partnership. In Marseilles there was a high level of consensus on our proposals for reinvigorating it and I would like to highlight the following: we must speed up the negotiation, signature and ratification of the association agreements. I am happy to confirm that we are achieving considerable progress on this. On Friday last week we managed, at last, to initial the agreement with Egypt and we are encouraged by the progress we are making with Algeria, with Lebanon and with Syria. I want to see negotiations with Algeria, Lebanon and Syria pursued vigorously this year, however the ratification process in the Member States is lamentably slow. The agreement with Jordan was signed three years ago, but it is still not in force. Help from the European Parliament in this respect would be most welcome. I do hope that, as well as making speeches in the Chamber, honourable Members will get on to their own parliaments and governments to ensure that when we reach agreement on one of these associations agreements it can be ratified rapidly.
There are two states which still have not ratified the Jordan agreement – no names, as they say, no pack drill – but I very much hope that Belgian and French MEPs – I hope I have not given the game away – will get on to their parliaments to press for ratification as soon as possible.
In due course we also need to tackle the issue of agricultural trade. The credibility of our partnership lies in being able to deal with sensitive matters like that and we need to have a genuine discussion. We must develop South-South trade and cooperation, including on a subregional basis. We want all countries signing an association agreement with us to conclude free-trade agreements among themselves within five years. This is the only manner to prepare our already agreed objective of an overall European-Union-Mediterranean free-trade area by 2010.
The development of subregional trade needs to be accompanied by greater subregional cooperation. Trading opportunities will not be used unless the infrastructure is there. We must introduce accumulation of origin for all partners establishing free trade between themselves and adopting the harmonised protocol on rules of origin. We must harmonise measures relating to the single market. We want a timetable to be in place by next year for priority sectors – such as rules of origin, customs, norms and standards, and intellectual property protection – for implementation starting in 2004, both between the partners and the Union and among the partners themselves.
All this, together with the support we give to our partners under MEDA, will increase the attractiveness of the region to investors. A decompartmentalised and open market with a sound and predictable legal and administrative environment is the best way to ensure that the very low levels of local, European and world-wide investment will increase.
Both reports rightly pay much attention to the need to improve MEDA, which one or two of the speakers who are still present in the Chamber mentioned during their remarks. Indeed, MEDA has an excellent record on commitments but is much less good on payments. Last year the record on commitments was maintained: the provisional figures show that EUR 879 million or 98% of available commitments were executed and the record on payments improved to EUR 335 million or 95% of available appropriations. I am happy to say that the control of the overhang of payments required to execute the commitments has begun to improve. As an average over the last five years, we have now paid 30% of existing commitments, compared to 26% one year ago, but there is still a long way to go. We are in the process of implementing two reforms, the revised MEDA regulation and the internal Commission reform. Taken together, I am confident that they will bring about serious improvements in the years to come.
Mr honourable friend, Mr Beazley, who I am delighted to say is still in his place, spoke about that and asked a specific question about Cyprus and Malta and their participation in regional programmes. I am delighted to answer “yes” – in the affirmative. It is a positive “yes” rather than negative or equivocal “yes”.
I note the opinion that the amount made available for the period 2000 to 2006 is insufficient. I was not surprised to see that mentioned in the report. It is certainly true that the EUR 5.35 billion agreed by the Council – I give away no secrets – is less than the Commission had proposed. Nevertheless, together with EIB lending, this means that nearly EUR 13 billion will be available over that period, which is not an insignificant amount of money. The important thing now is to see that this money is used effectively in terms both of the quality of our actions in relation to the policy objectives and of actual payments on the ground.
The Commission has proposed that, for the future, MEDA allocation should be more closely linked to the association process and the implementation of economic reforms. I make no apology for this and I am glad to note support for this line in one of the reports.
I have noted the calls to increase the numbers of Commission staff available to work on this sector. I recognise that the staff concerned are extremely hard pressed, but any decisions will have to be taken in the context of the evolution of Commission staffing levels overall and here again I would be delighted for concrete help from Parliament.
The Mediterranean is our near abroad, on our southern flank, so it should enjoy a very special place in our external relations. The objectives agreed at Barcelona remain fundamentally valid and they are increasingly relevant: working together for peace and stability, creating shared prosperity through establishing free trade, providing the economic and financial assistance to meet the challenges which that implies, and helping to improve mutual understanding and tolerance among peoples of different cultures and different traditions.
We will also be working this year on a programme to take account of the social effects of economic transition. This will promote education and training, the enhancement of the role of women and social security systems as well as actions on health.
I was not surprised that both reports called for increased support for civil society. I fully agree with these. The question is how best to go about it. I fear that financing micro-projects is not the answer. These are not cost-effective and they are wasteful of staff resources. Decentralised cooperation is to be welcomed, but not in the sense of relaunching the old Mediterranean decentralised cooperation programmes. However worthy their objectives, they were seriously criticised by the Court of Auditors and indeed they were seriously criticised by this Parliament. Rather we need to explain more clearly to civil society – whether NGOs, local authorities or other groups – that our programmes are open to their participation and they only need to organise themselves to respond to our calls for proposals.
Good examples of this already exist in our sectoral regional cooperation programmes, for example on the environment, the cultural heritage and MEDA democracy. I propose to make a concerted effort in this sense and to try to generalise the approach. In the longer term, we could look at other ways of supporting civil society and I should certainly be prepared to consider any concrete proposals which Parliament may put forward.
Finally, I am glad to note the agreement all round on the need to raise the visibility of the partnership. I warmly welcome Parliament’s activities in this respect through international contacts at all levels. I am only sorry that I will not be able to attend the forum on 8 and 9 February, but I am on a troika visit on those two days. I hope Parliament will understand. We shall be supplementing our existing activities through the introduction of a dedicated programme using all the modern techniques at our disposal to ensure that the value of what we are doing is appreciated as widely as possible both in the European Union and among the Mediterranean partners.
One speaker, Mr Obiols i Germà, who I am delighted to see in his place, said that we must not just give lip service to our objectives in the Barcelona Process. Someone else, who I am afraid is not here, said we should give evidence of tangible action. That is what we are trying to do. That is what the document that we put on the table in Marseilles attempts to do: a serious effort to reinvigorate the Barcelona Process with concrete proposals for action.
So, as far as we are concerned in the Commission, we do not want to make the same old speeches, we do not want to go on the same old roundabouts of meetings and summits and conferences and bilateral agreements. We want to complete all the association agreements and get them ratified and we have a good chance of completing at least another two association agreements this year; I would hope for the lot. We must deal with issues like South-South trade and accumulation, we must deal with regional cooperation, we have to speed up delivery under MEDA. This is not a virtual policy. It is a real policy that we want to make work in real time. I hope that in future debates in Parliament – as well attended from beginning to end as this one has been, at least in part – we will be able to chart our progress in what must be one of the priorities for the external actions of the European Union.
As the House will know, I had long believed that the time had come to see how we could improve the delivery of the Barcelona objectives. We therefore worked very hard on a Commission communication on reinvigorating the Barcelona Process, which in turn provided the main input for the Euro-Mediterranean Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Marseilles last November where our ideas were overwhelmingly endorsed. That document was on the table, that document was the principle agenda for that meeting.
I should like now to give you my assessment of where we stand and where we should go from here. With the permission of the House, I will address points arising from both reports in this context rather than dealing with each report separately.
First, let me look at the political situation in the region, which we are going to debate in a few moments’ time. Both reports note the considerable significance of the Middle East peace process for European Union policy in the Mediterranean. I note the calls in both reports for the European Union to play a more active role in the peace process.
Let us not underestimate our contribution. We are, for example, and it is not an unreasonable point to make, the major donor to the Palestinian Authority. Last year EUR 155.6 million was earmarked from the Community budget, which included EUR 90 million for a special cash facility that I made available at the end of the year to help preserve the institutional framework of the Palestinian Authority, which we have helped to create and fund.
I would like, without reservation, to thank the House – to thank this part of the budgetary authority – and also to thank the Council for their assistance in ensuring that we could make that cash facility available before Christmas. As events have sadly proved, it is going to be all too necessary.
At the meeting in Marseilles, ministers decided, rightly in my view, not to seek agreement on the proposed Charter for Peace and Stability. This was clearly not the right moment. Nevertheless, in substance a good deal of progress had been made towards agreement on this instrument. We should make sure that we can capitalise on that progress when the time is right, so that it becomes a genuinely meaningful document, reflecting the European Union’s active commitment to maintaining regional peace and stability.
In the meantime – and here I also echo comments made in both the reports that we are considering – we should not wait for the charter to be in force to make more efforts to promote respect for human rights and democratic freedoms in the region. Our communication is unequivocal on this subject. The European Union should use all appropriate fora to press for progress on these issues. The MEDA democracy programme should continue to be used to fund positive actions and MEDA allocations themselves should be more dependent on adequate progress. I very much welcome Parliament’s backing on this and I hope that the Council will also react positively."@en1
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