Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-12-Speech-2-200"
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"May I first pay a very warm tribute to the high quality of the work done by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy and in particular by the rapporteur Mr Galeote Quecedo who has once again done an excellent job. We should not forget the important contribution of the Committee on Budgets, with the ever-wise Mr Bourlanges as rapporteur, the opinion of the Committee on Budgetary Control – I have enjoyed discussing these matters with Mr Blak – and not least the opinion of the Committee on Development and Cooperation drafted by Mrs Junker.
I am also aware that the House is expecting to be fully informed by the Commission on the redeployment of human resources, regionalisation of the network and the opening or closing of delegations – a point which I want to return at the end of my remarks. As these points still have to be decided by the College, I will merely say to the House that the recommendations made in the reports now under discussion will be carefully examined and analysed.
Finally, let me comment on the proposed action plan. Some of its points, such as the proposal that starting in June of this year each head of delegation signs an annual declaration that adequate internal controls have been put in place, will be considered in the follow-up to the recent discharge resolution. The House should be aware that heads of delegation already have to sign the new charter of authorising officers, which sets out the tasks entrusted to them, their obligations and their responsibilities.
Other points the House makes concerning, for example, mission statements, redeployment, new delegations, monitoring and evaluation will be tackled in the communication on the development of the external service, which we will be bringing forward shortly.
I hope the message is clear. We take the reform and development of the external service very seriously. I have said since I took up office that I want to see the emergence of a modern, effective and streamlined service, working as an integral part of the external relations structures of the Commission, and at the service of all the institutions of the Union. This is still my objective, shared by my colleagues and by the senior management in the external relations services of the Commission. But it is a long haul. It must build on the trust and motivation of the staff, many of them working in difficult conditions far away from their colleagues at headquarters. It requires careful planning, training and not least funding. I trust that we can count on Parliament's support and understanding in the work still ahead of us.
One or two honourable Members asked us not to be short of ambition, to be more ambitious in what we do. I just want to make one very obvious point to Parliament, which may be a little prosaic. Ambition depends on two things. First of all, ambition depends on having the money to actually implement your ambitions. Secondly, ambition depends on being prepared to take tough political decisions in order to achieve your ambitions. One of my ambitions, and this may be regarded by some as an eccentricity, is to try to ensure that the ambitions in the area for which I am responsible are matched by the funds that we actually have to spend on them.
I also want to see us being prepared to take the tough political decisions that are required to modernise our external service. But with great respect to the House, it is no good the House on one side telling me that we can never close a delegation; then on the other side people tell us that we should open new delegations and the whole House agreeing that there should be a limit on the number of delegations we can have. In the past Parliament has insisted that there should be a ceiling on the number of delegations. I do not object to that, provided that if we have to close some delegations in order to open others, we have the understanding and support of the House.
But if we are to be ambitious, as I would like to be, there has to be an understanding between the Commission and Parliament as well as between the Commission and the Council. We have to be absolutely open about any tough decisions we have to make. Then all of us together have to share in taking the political responsibility for those decisions. Please do not let us get into a situation in which everybody wants to be ambitious but nobody is actually prepared to spend the money to be ambitious or to take the necessary political decisions. I am looking forward to this debate and to Parliament's understanding as we try together to create the sort of external service which the European Union deserves.
All these documents are also timely as the Commission is now finalising its communication to Parliament on further developments of the external service as a follow-up to the one we presented last July. I can assure Parliament that the recommendations made in the report are extremely important for the Commission. I also take them as an encouraging sign that Parliament shares our ambition to make the external service an even more effective instrument of our external policy. We will, of course, continue to report regularly to Parliament on the progress we make.
Let me offer a number of observations. First, this Parliament stresses its wish to clarify its relations with the external delegations. The House may remember that this point was already raised when we discussed Mr Galeote Quecedo's report on a common Community diplomacy last September. I assured this House that although delegations are formally delegations of the Commission, we have made it absolutely clear that they should regard themselves as serving Parliament, the High Representative and the other Community institutions as well.
In response to some of the points that were made during the debate, of course it is the case that our delegations and the embassies of Member States have to coordinate their activities far more successfully. This is something that we have debated in the Council. The delegations should indeed help to arrange programmes for visiting parliamentary delegations and committees. I also agree that it would be useful for heads of delegations to appear occasionally before the Committee on Foreign Affairs and other committees of Parliament when they are back in Brussels to report on recent developments in their host countries and the development of European Union policy and programmes there.
A second major concern of this Parliament is the so-called deconcentration of our operational activities. That, as the House knows, is jargon for devolving authority and responsibility where it belongs, to the people in the field. Parliament will remember that this move to more deconcentration was an explicit commitment of the Commission in its communication of May last year on the external assistance reform, reiterated in the July communication on the external service.
We are now in the middle of the first wave of the deconcentration exercise. Deconcentration concepts have been established for each major programme. Staff requirements have been assessed for each delegation. Officials are in the process of being selected and trained. Last, but not least, accounting and management systems are being interconnected between headquarters and the delegations concerned. More then 20 delegations will be strengthened this year, another 30 or so next year and the remaining ones in 2003 and 2004. I will, of course, report to this House in more detail on deconcentration later in the year, but generally speaking the work is on schedule.
There is one point that I want to emphasise very strongly. There is nothing whatsoever to be said for deconcentration while retaining a collection of mothers-in-law in Brussels. If one is going to deconcentrate, then that means management of programmes on the ground. It does not mean many people second-guessing the people on the ground back in Brussels. The problem of
the problem of whether or not we are really going to deconcentrate, is one I feel very strongly about. As far as I am concerned and as far as the board of EuropeAid is concerned, it is imperative to ensure that among our performance indicators there is one which gives us an indication of progress made in moving all the management of projects into the delegations, where it should be.
We have seen, as somebody pointed out in the debate, the success of deconcentration in Sarajevo and I want to see that success replicated elsewhere, but deconcentration is not just a question of numbers and procedures. To be successful it requires a real change of administrative culture in the external services of the Commission, at headquarters and in delegations. In this respect, the rapporteur's insistence on the need to improve and develop our training programmes is very opportune. Although I am the first to admit that there is still room for improvement in this area, serious efforts have been made and will be continued. I had the opportunity to take a look at the training programme for our external staff and I was very impressed by it. It covers not only policy areas such as trade and CFSP, but also practical day-to-day topics and modern management techniques. It does, of course, need to include all the subjects which are loosely described as gender mainstreaming, to which the honourable Member referred in the debate.
In parallel, the EuropeAid Cooperation Office has set up a very ambitious training programme specifically for the deconcentration exercise. Parliament may also be interested to know that the first pilot session of the European Diplomatic Programme, which is a common training programme for European diplomats sponsored jointly by the Member States and the Commission, has recently been assessed and deemed to be successful. The second session is starting this autumn. This initiative may not be based precisely on the model of a college of European diplomacy, which the Mr Galeote espoused in his report last autumn; but it is a sensible step forward."@en1
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