Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-15-Speech-2-737-000"
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"en.20111115.35.2-737-000"2
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"Madam President, I, too, am not very proud to be here. There is only a small number of us to discuss what is, after all, an Assembly that deals with issues of great importance that affect a large population and a region of the world that is paying an extremely high price, which, in the end, serves to reveal all the issues that we are raising today, be it climate change or issues around energy, finance and democracy. It is probably this part of the world, the African continent and the countries of the Caribbean and Pacific, that faces these issues most acutely. The parliamentarians who are here, who are doubtless those who are the most interested in being part of the ACP–EU Joint Assembly and maybe also the Committee on Development for some of us, or in other parliamentary committees, show to what extent we can be isolated when working on such an important issue.
To echo the words of Mr Goerens, is the Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) a club with a few well-meaning friends of Africa who chat in the sunshine while taking a bit of Malarone and anti-malarial medicine before leaving, or is it a genuine instrument?
On this point, I agree with him: probably a bit of both. A bit of both, because I think that this Assembly is both a remarkable sounding board, a unique and invaluable place of debate, meeting and dialogue – and I am grateful to the rapporteur for having highlighted these extremely positive aspects – but, at the same time, we must, at all costs, strengthen the power and levers of a parliamentary assembly, not only for the budget, but on other aspects too.
I shall take an example that is close to my heart, for which I had already put forward proposals in the context of the reform of the JPA: the follow-up of the economic partnership agreements. We have been overtaken, as it were, by another place, other follow-up places, the follow-up of the economic partnership agreements. Whatever one’s view is on the content, we need a democratic follow-up. I call for the Committee on Economic Affairs of this Joint ACP-EU Assembly to be the one that deals with the follow-up of the economic partnership agreements, otherwise it makes no sense. Our budgetary power is already small. Admittedly, we have a power of impetus, dialogue, meeting, of taking into consideration a series of problems, but if we cannot follow up on the economic aspect, whatever we may otherwise think and whatever our point of view on the economic partnership agreements, if we are not able, within the JPA, to follow up on them, question them and be the follow-up committee for these agreements, which really are the heart of economic policies in the relations between the European Union and these countries, I think we would miss an extremely important point.
I come back with the idea that we could reinvest the JPA committees with real subjects of democratic control, real issues and not only, as we are currently doing, quite well for that matter, motions, resolutions, debate texts like the one we have just discussed on precisely all the democratic issues, on political power changing hands in African countries, on a series of issues that are central, but that are, in the end, only reference texts. I urge us to take more power in this Assembly and to give ourselves the means to exercise real powers of parliament and joint assembly, in relation to the Commission which is working, among other things, on the economic partnership agreements.
I believe, therefore, that there is a very interesting link here. I ask you and I put the question, ladies and gentlemen: are we ready, yes or no, with this report and, in future, to go a bit further in the Joint Assembly’s application on a democratic and parliamentarian follow-up that is a bit more powerful than the one we currently have, or else we may turn into a mere club of friends of Africa, which is very well-meaning but altogether inadequate for the parliamentarian function that is ours?"@en1
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