Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-03-Speech-3-161"
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"en.20000503.10.3-161"2
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"Mr President, I am indeed privileged today to present this report to Parliament. It is one of the first reports from the Development Committee under the codecision procedure. I am particularly grateful to all my colleagues who have turned up in force to hear me speak and present my first report to Parliament and the heaving public galleries. All are waiting with bated breadth to hear my speech.
This is a very urgent matter. It is my hope that we can pass this report without any substantial amendment other than procedural ones because the report is an extension for one year of an existing regulation which supports four million refugees in the most war-torn and ravaged part of the world. If we delay or fail to pass this report in plenary as soon as possible, all further assistance, food supply, housing, shelter, water, sanitation and education, to the most vulnerable people in the world, will be severely affected as there will be no legal base in the European Union to support them and to fund them.
What we are doing today is to consider a Commission proposal to extend the regulation on aid to uprooted people in Asia and Latin America, which expired on 31 December 1999. The extension we propose is for one year until 31 December 2000. The extension of the regulation will enable a further EUR 40 million to be spent until the end of this year.
Between 1997 and 1999, Parliament sanctioned EUR 240 million. This regulation came to an end on 31 December 1999. By extending this regulation today for a further period of one year, we are also giving the Commission time to prepare a new regulation which I hope will be a multiannual one to replace the existing regulation. This new regulation, to be brought in at a later date, should build on, and take into account, the existing regulation as well the annual report and the evaluation which the Commission has undertaken to present to Parliament and Council in the very near future, and no later than September.
The European Parliament’s original report on the current regulation, the Howitt report, was exemplary in how it was constructed by Parliament. It had considerable success in improving the existing draft and thus played an important part in supporting and improving the text which was finally adopted. Notably, the Parliament contributed to a strengthening of the regulation in its reference to environmental concerns, complementary support and cooperation and assisting local host populations, a strong approach for targeting support programmes towards women refugees, particularly those who have been the victims of rape, and a clear provision for the upholding of the “non-refoulement” principle, i.e. protection against forced return.
Mr Howitt engaged then in a very positive dialogue with the Irish presidency as well as with the Commission in order to improve on the existing draft. In addition, and more importantly, more than fifty NGOs were consulted. Therefore the Parliament played a major role in producing this regulation with its report.
Support to uprooted people, refugees, returnees and internally displaced people in Latin America and Asian developing countries has been a feature of the Community budget since 1984. The UNHCR estimates that there are 4.8 million in Asia and some 88 000 in Latin America. Of these, the current regulation and the one year extension that our report today is calling for, will continue to help 2.9 million Afghani refugees of whom about 40% are in Pakistan and Iran and the 60% balance in Afghanistan itself. A total of EUR 24.3 million was given to Afghani refugees with a further EUR 960 000 to Thailand, EUR 6 million to Sri Lanka, EUR 11.8 million to Burma and EUR 1.8 million to Nepal. In Afghanistan, about 2 million people were assisted by the mine-clearance programme which is crucial in returning that country back to normality.
Therefore, in a sense, an immediate approval of the proposal would postpone the need for a long-term solution. In doing so it would nevertheless allow the institutions to engage in a more thorough dialogue in this area and hopefully allow us to find a more permanent solution by 2001.
This is also a very timely report in the context of asylum-seekers. We are now presented with a solution by this Parliament, by our institutions in Europe, where we want to and can help people where the problem is. We can stop people needing or wanting to come across if we can help them at the place where the problem has arisen. The central thrust of my report is to help the people in war-torn areas, in ravaged parts of the world, to settle back to normality, to have proper foundations and sanitation, proper infrastructure, and to stop them needing to travel as asylum seekers and refugees."@en1
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