Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-17-Speech-4-011-000"
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"en.20110217.4.4-011-000"2
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"−
Mr President, I should like first of all to thank Mr Kalfin for the excellent work we have been able to carry out together and, on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for which I was the rapporteur, to thank my colleagues Mrs Hautala, Mr Lambsdorff and Mrs Giannakou.
As he has done so himself, I am not going to review the positive points of the report and the proposal defended by Mr Kalfin on the climate change mandate, the increase in human resources, the attention paid to social and development aspects, the environment, human rights, the shift in focus of the guarantee towards countries that need it most, and a stronger link with EU policies.
Parliament is united on all these points – let me make that clear – and it must remain so during the difficult negotiations that, as I have just heard, await us with the Council.
I would like to draw attention to two shortcomings at this stage. I regret that neither the need to now prepare the EIB for microcredit nor the need to already begin the debate on the post-2013 ceilings has been taken on board, even though the Committee on Foreign Affairs voted for both of these things in the consensus reached by all the political groups. That is why the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament decided, with the consent of Mr Kalfin and of the other rapporteurs, to table amendments in plenary on these two subjects.
Lastly, there is one crucial point to which I should like, politically speaking, to draw your attention and which has been the subject of debate for years. When the Berlin Wall fell, we were able to react not only with the enlargement project, the practical arrangements of which some may question, but which is undeniably necessary, but before that, we established the EBRD so as to be able to support the necessary economic and democratic transition.
The European Union, and also the EIB, as the power behind it, is the largest provider of funds to the other side of the Mediterranean. At the same time, however, we know that the payment of those funds will not continue beyond one programming period – in other words, beyond 2013, as I mentioned just now – and that the discussions that we are having today show that there may be difficulties in the future.
There is a project – already adopted by the European Parliament and endorsed in the report on the Union for the Mediterranean – which is referred to in the Kalfin report being debated today, and it is the creation of a Euro-Mediterreanean codevelopment and investment bank. This would be a practical way, beyond rhetorical statements, of acknowledging the European Union’s will to support the major democratic movement taking place on the other side of the Mediterranean, and I hope that this will be seriously addressed and that steps will be taken, in the coming months, to promote the creation of that bank."@en1
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