Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-378"
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"en.20020313.16.3-378"2
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".
Mr President, I think it has become increasingly clear that issues of cooperation and of development today lie at the heart of international policy. It is crucial that we achieve more effective cooperation and are more successful in the objective of the sustainable development of various parts of the world as the essential condition for a more secure and more peaceful future. It is within this strategy that the Union European must put its strengths to advantage in the field of external policy, not least because it is the only area in which the European Union can come out on top without necessarily causing victims. Decentralised cooperation could be considered to be one of those ideas, which appears discreetly, as part of a line of thought and of action that comes together in the approach I have just mentioned. It is a concept that needs greater clarification. It is, therefore, appropriate that this should be included in the Commission communication on civil society and development, which Commissioner Nielson promised us for the autumn.
The European Parliament, for its part, has always seen decentralised cooperation to be a development approach that deserves all our support. Nevertheless, the Cotonou agreement also emphasises the importance of the contribution of civil society to development and suggests that ‘it can be enhanced by strengthening community organisations and non-profit non-governmental organisations in all spheres of cooperation’. The initiatives and actions covered by the line of support to which this regulation refers are designed precisely to promote a more participatory form of development, the strengthening and greater diversification of civil society, as well as of various structures at grassroots level with a view to building democracy. These are, in fact, some of the main requirements for achieving an effective reduction in poverty.
The aim is now, in the words of the Commission's explanatory memorandum, ‘to move on from an experimental phase to one of consolidation of the concept on a larger scale in the context of official cooperation’. We fully agree with this objective. It is true that the issue deserves a debate with greater participation from us, not least because it deals with the codecision procedure, but the Commission submitted its proposal at a time when the regulation’s period in force was almost at an end, and if it is not adopted at first reading, a legal vacuum would be created that would damage precisely those that we are trying to support. Bearing this concern in mind, intense work was undertaken, in a spirit of mutual cooperation, that involved speakers from the NGOs and representatives of the Commission, the Council and the Spanish Presidency. Our contribution as the European Parliament focused on providing the regulation with greater coherence and cohesion. Some amendments were tabled, and in the explanatory statement I provide an account of our efforts to find an identity, if I can put it like that, for decentralised cooperation.
Consequently, if the proposals before us are adopted, we will have a regulation on decentralised cooperation that guarantees us the following: firstly, an instrument that is extended to 2003 with a financial framework of EUR 24 million; secondly, the commitment to consolidate decentralised cooperation as a guide for cooperation policy, which gives a more significant role to local players, thereby giving them an incentive to take greater responsibility in the process of developing the very societies in which they live and in their relationship with their Europeans partners; thirdly and lastly, the commitment to the future existence of decentralised cooperation as a method for strengthening the objectives stated by the Commission itself for the “appropriation by the partner countries of their own development strategies and of the widest possible participation by all sectors of society”."@en1
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