Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-12-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20061212.8.2-023"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Mitchell, this House, the Council and the Commission have spent much time wrangling over the future development finance instrument, and have actually ended up finding a largely sustainable compromise. The intention is that the new instrument should help us to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, thus forwarding a very important objective of which both the committee and this House as a whole have been recurrent defenders, and, in view of the UN’s recently-published estimate of their effectiveness to date, particularly in the fight against poverty, I see the EU as sending out a very important message in that respect.
It is evident that Mr Mitchell’s dedication, as rapporteur, and that of the Committee on Development as a whole, to changing the regulation as tabled has very definitely paid off, and so, with compromise in mind, all the groups have held back from tabling amendments, although the rapporteur has not, and I have to say, with some regret, that this is where he comes in for strong criticism from me, for, rather than doing what he said he would and supporting those who want to grapple with the wording of the compromise agreement, Mr Mitchell has himself been tabling the relevant amendments, which I see as being, in many respects, highly problematic and outrageous, in that they demand nothing less than that the reproductive health of women should cease to be a goal in development cooperation; his amendments aimed at deleting Recital 18 and parts of Articles 5 and 12 do not merely do away with the wordings he finds disagreeable, contrary to what he has said, but also have the effect of removing other goals as well, among them the right to give birth free of risk and to generalised access to comprehensive, safe and reliable reproductive sexual health care and services, the reduction of infant mortality and the fight against diseases associated with poverty, particularly HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. In so doing, he disregards not only the compromise already arrived at, but also world opinion as expressed at the UN conferences on population development, in Cairo, and on the situation of women, held in Beijing, and hence also the WHO’s definition. That I regard as a scandal, and I think this House would be making itself look utterly ridiculous if it were to adopt his amendments tomorrow. My group will, as a matter of profound conviction, be voting against them.
I think it makes a great deal of sense to combine the EU’s aid options – which have hitherto been highly chaotic – in a single instrument, but this must not have the consequence of important matters simply being dropped. Since the rapporteur is questioning the compromise, I can already tell him that my group will, in future, be asking searching questions about one aspect of the new finance instrument in particular, namely the use of development cooperation resources to fund measures aimed against illegal immigration and used for the stepping up of border controls.
Article 16(2)c introduces into this compromise something that perverts virtually the whole of immigration and asylum policy, which, as formulated elsewhere in Article 16, is a positive approach.
You can be sure that my group, in doing this, will avail itself of one particularly positive aspect of the new instrument, namely the better opportunity given to this House to have direct input alongside the Council and the Commission, at whose insistence, significantly, trade will, in future, be included alongside the funding of development. Notwithstanding the fact that the first words of the new instrument stress the importance of the developing countries’ trading capacities, we will be most careful to ensure that we do not embark upon a new decade characterised by the covert promotion of external trade. We will ask searching questions and take a critical line if, in so doing, your sole desire is to help the countries of the Global South to sell Europe the raw materials it needs without let or hindrance, for it is not selling all their raw materials, but rather fair trade with finished goods, that offers southern societies a chance to overcome poverty. A fortnight ago, in the
Philippe Maystadt, the President of the European Investment Bank, warned that Europe was imposing too stringent conditions on financial arrangements to be able to compete with Chinese or Russian businesses for African raw materials. Where is this argument going? Do we not then end up again tolerating slave labour in order not to lose the race for raw materials? I find it quite remarkable, and a cause for rejoicing, that it is stated in the present financial instrument and in our compromise that the criteria to be met include that of ‘decent work’ on which the mind of this House is shortly to be expressed by a report. I believe that this sends a very important message in response to calls – which I regard as wrong-headed – for the European Union, in future, to be less exacting in its political criteria in terms of the war on poverty and the advancement of development.
Let us instead use the new instrument, knowing how important coherence and policy are, to offer something better, with bauxite being turned into aluminium locally, using environmentally-friendly methods, by workers working under decent conditions and for living wages. The new instrument will have achieved something if it manages to create the conditions with respect to education and health without which productive economic performance that benefits the local community is not even possible."@en1
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