Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-16-Speech-2-154"
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"en.20031216.4.2-154"2
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"Mr President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteurs and indeed all those concerned with the budgetary process. I am rather an absentee member of the Committee on Budgets myself.
I wanted to talk this afternoon about a small but highly sensitive programme the European Initiative on Democracy and Human Rights, which is Line 1904 in the budget and to which amendments have been tabled on which we will vote tomorrow. I was the rapporteur who set up this fund in 1992, which now has EUR 100 million in it. I am currently rapporteur for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy on the two financial regulations which will cover the financing of this programme in 2005 and 2006, as well as the communication from the Commission called 'Reintegrating human rights and democracy in the Mediterranean'. It is on this particular point that I want to focus.
It seems to me that we need to be very conscious of the arc of instability running up from Morocco through the near-neighbour countries to the European Union as we enlarge next year. Indeed this whole region was called an 'arc of reform' by President Bush, but it is not so. There are many problems, some of which were referred to by Mr McCartin just now, and by other speakers too.
The European Parliament, which set up this Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights, should now encourage the Commission immediately to refocus its 2004 priorities on this wider Europe programme, and in particular on the Arab countries. Some will know that the UNDP 2002 report focused on the lack of democracy in the Arab countries. The 2003 report contains surveys of public opinion in those countries which show that the Arabs actually have the highest demand and appetite for democracy of any region in the world.
We in the European Parliament therefore have a special duty to sustain, encourage and develop those programmes, particularly in 2004. I intend to make use of the codecision on these two financial regulations to encourage the Commission and the Council to allow the European Parliament once more to have the oversight that it used to have on these programmes and to provide the political cover which the Council of Ministers cannot provide."@en1
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