Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-03-Speech-2-146"
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"en.20010703.9.2-146"2
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". – The Commission is aware of the importance of this project and the need for early action to ensure that the ACP States will be ready and better prepared to open negotiations with the EU on economic partnership agreements from September 2002. So where do we stand today in the implementation of the project? As foreseen, the pre-qualification tendering procedure for the programme management unit was launched in June this year and the tenders will be opened on 20 July at the ACP Secretariat General. The committee evaluating the tenders will consist of three members designated by the ACP Secretariat and three members designated by the Commission. This committee will decide which companies will participate in the tender for the programme management unit. I expect that this programme management unit will be in place by December this year at the latest; with some luck, a couple of weeks before.
This would keep us within the original time schedule foreseen for the implementation of the project. The project will not be fully operational before the programme management unit is up and running. However, in view of the importance of some of the activities in the project in particular, the Commission has taken steps to begin on an ad hoc basis to implement some of the actions foreseen in the project, and this is already going on. It includes seminars on capacity building sessions of the ACP Ministerial Trade Committee for negotiations of new, WTO-compatible, trading arrangements with the EU. Two sessions of this kind have taken place, one in Johannesburg on 10 and 11 April 2001 and a second one in Brussels on 13 and 14 May.
Secondly, a seminar was organised at the second meeting of the heads of ACP organisations working on regional integration on 3 and 4 May this year in Brussels and further seminars are scheduled to take place in the period July/September this year. So all these action-oriented seminars are actually in the process of taking place. We can either be satisfied that the preparation and implementation is on track or be disappointed and frustrated because it is such a slow track, but this has to do with more general problems, which we may not be able to take care of today. Let me also say that, important and useful as these activities are, they are not, and never were, preconditions for the opening up of trade negotiations in September 2002 in accordance with the Cotonou Agreement. But I understand well why the question has been put."@en1
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