Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-260"
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"en.20070619.41.2-260"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to see that the Commissioner for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid is back with us. We know how busy his schedule is. His leave of absence as Commissioner to play an active role in Belgium’s parliamentary elections may have come to an end – and this European Commissioner’s leave of absence has certainly not been in vain for his party, which I should like to congratulate him on. Nonetheless, we have to note with admiration and some surprise that he remains active on both fronts, even after his leave: here in this Chamber as the Commissioner for Development Cooperation, but also in Brussels where feverish activity is prevailing as a new Belgian Government is being formed and where today, the Commissioner is urging my country’s French-speaking Green Party to join the government. Indeed, it is not easy combining the job of European Commissioner with that of Belgium’s deputy ‘informateur’ investigating on behalf of the crown whether a proposed cabinet formation will succeed. The question whether this mix may not lead to possible bias and whether the Commission’s neutrality is in the balance as a result, probably comes into this too.
Quite apart from this comment, it would be better – and I am now referring to the Kinnock report – to turn our attention to the question of how scientific our approach is towards the Millennium Goals. This provocative question was put by Amir Attaran, an authority in development cooperation at the University of Ottawa in Canada. Indeed, Mr Attaran very much questions the scientific basis underpinning these objectives and above all, the way in which achieving these is being measured. He mentions, by way of example, the objective concerning malaria, and states that even institutions such as the World Health Organisation admit that they are not certain of the relevant data that is being provided. By accepting uncertain statistics as the truth, the UN is building a set of Millennium Objectives on quicksand, according to Mr Attaran. Scientific reliability should be the first concern in development cooperation too. It is time we held a thorough debate on this very subject."@en1
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