Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-19-Speech-3-021"
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"en.20000119.2.3-021"2
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"I thank Foreign Minister Gama for his extremely thoughtful and comprehensive presentation. I am glad that his visit to the Middle East went so well. I am only sorry that I was not able to be with him since I was, at the time, seeking to get to Thessaloniki for the first meeting of the Reconstruction Agency. But I have to put the emphasis on the word "seeking" since I spent most of Monday at Munich airport.
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As I have said before, I have the honour to work with officials who are very good, but are having to operate procedures which are lousy. That is why we have launched a review of the delivery of our external aid programmes and I hope to bring proposals for change before you in the spring. I am delighted that this is a subject which you clearly attach priority to.
We are drawing up a new regulation covering our assistance to the Balkans. The intention is to simplify our procedures and to speed-up our assistance. We will be reporting with Javier Solana to the Lisbon European Council on our policy in the Balkans and ways to deliver our help better.
On Monday, the European Reconstruction Agency was launched in Thessaloniki. It will have a vital role, first of all in Kosovo and subsequently, I suspect, more widely. I hope it will be able to follow in the footsteps of our Task Force in Pristina which is now near the end of its assignment. The Task Force has shown that the Union can do a seriously effective job and fast, with the right leadership, with the minimum of red tape and by delegating authority to the people in the field. Commending its work is not a demonstration of complacency about the position in Kosovo. There is a huge amount for us to do there in order to live up to our promises and our ideals.
There is a further point that is relevant to the question of resources. Member States must be ready to make hard choices about what the Union can and cannot do and to recognise frankly that sometimes they make it harder for the Commission to be efficient because of the conditions with which they burden our efforts.
This will be a critical year for Russia with the election of Yeltsin’s successor. Chechnya will, of course, loom large. We will keep our policy under review. The Commission needs very clear guidance from Member States as to how to use the instruments at our disposal: the common strategy, the partnership and cooperation agreement, TACIS, human rights and democracy programmes, food aid and so on. We are considering with the Council how to implement the decisions reached at Helsinki.
In the Middle East there may be grounds for hope. The pace of developments in the Middle East peace process has accelerated recently despite the setbacks this week. We will have a debate on this shortly. Let me just say that we are conscious that the European Union has, and will continue to have, a major contribution to make and not just by digging deeper in our collective pockets, although our financial contribution has been and will continue to be substantial.
Closer to home, we need to breathe new life into the Barcelona process and I look forward to the conference that will be organised later in the year on the EU-Mediterranean partnership, just as I look forward to the EU-Africa Summit.
I hope that we will be able to work with the presidency in fostering a growing political and economic relationship between the European Union and Asia. The Commission will shortly be producing a communication with Indonesia. We hope that our discussions with China on WTO entry, difficult though they may be, reach a successful conclusion.
I am delighted that, thanks to the presidency's initiative, we will be holding a summit with India. I believe that we should be working to strengthen our relationship with what is, after all, the largest, greatest democracy in the world, a country where, in election after election, more people vote in free and fair elections than in the whole of Europe and North America put together.
I do not intend to speak at length today, not least because I do not want to pre-empt the speech that Mr Prodi will deliver here next month. That speech will cover not just the next six months, but the next five years.
This Parliament, understandably, has always taken a close interest in how the European Union supports human rights and democratisation worldwide, including through the hundred million euro available under the European initiative for democracy and human rights. I share that interest strongly. Many changes have taken place in recent years, not least the adoption in 1999 of the two human rights regulations. In the first half of this year the Commission intends to adopt a communication setting out its approach to policy in this area, including the official management of our human rights and democratisation programmes.
Parliament asked the previous Commission to assess the European Union's participation in election observation missions in recent years – an experience which can be best described as "mixed". In response to this request and to the changed legal and budgetary environment provided by the new regulations, the Commission intends to adopt a communication before Easter, setting out some proposals for rationalising and improving our activity in the areas of election observation and assistance. That, I know, will be a subject of particular concern to the House.
It is plainly going to be a busy six months, a period in which we can, I hope, make a difference. I look forward to working with honourable Members and with the new presidency, whom I congratulate on their programme. I look forward to working with them to achieve that objective.
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Let me echo the presidency, however, in saying that the Commission will naturally continue to set great store by its accountability to this Parliament. We also support the presidency's efforts to make the Council of Ministers more effective. As a Commission we are already engaged in a major reform exercise which we shall be discussing with Parliament in the next few months. But I want to focus my remarks primarily on issues that fall within my remit as External Relations Commissioner.
The presidency will have broader interests. It will have to guide the first phase of the Intergovernmental Conference. It will also have to follow up on the many commitments made at the European Councils in Helsinki and Tampere. For example, on enlargement, formal negotiations with the six newly admitted candidates will begin in February. At the same time the rhythm of negotiations with the other candidates must be maintained and the pre-accession strategy for Turkey has to be established.
In all these areas the Commission will be working flat out. Other major initiatives will be the European Council in March on Employment, Economic Reform and Social Cohesion for a Europe of Innovation and Knowledge, and the minister referred to that. We intend to follow up this Council with an action plan, E-Europe for the Information Society.
In my own field, the presidency rightly identifies progress on the formulation of the common European security and defence policy as a key priority. Minister Gama rightly drew attention to the importance of closing the gap between Europe's economic strength and our political influence, not because of some post-imperial vainglory but because our citizens expect us to do that and the world wants us to do that.
The presidency will see the establishment of the interim Political and Security Committee. I have proposed that the Commission should create a small crisis centre designed to enable us to react more swiftly when required, primarily in the delivery of aid. The Commission also considers it a priority to establish a rapid reaction fund, designed to provide quick financing for ad hoc crisis prevention and crisis management activities. This should cover, for instance, the rapid deployment of police forces and of human rights or election monitors, and support for civilian relief work, for security for institution-building and for media reform and public information campaigns.
We will continue to be heavily committed in the Balkans supporting Bernard Kouchner and the UN-led administration in Kosovo, developing our relations with the opposition in Serbia to encourage a change of regime, supporting the democratic government in Montenegro, continuing the difficult task of building a multi-ethnic Bosnia, supporting the new government in Croatia and drawing Albania and FYROM closer to Europe.
I will just make three general points. First, we need to do all that we can to ensure that our finite resources are used to best effect. I have dwelt before on the slow and inefficient delivery of our aid programmes. I am getting a reputation for being obsessed with this issue – a reputation which I am honoured to have. Anyone who comes to my office will see that the carpets are already well-chewed and the walls well-climbed in frustration at the length of time it takes us to get things done. It is intolerable, it has to change and it will change."@en1
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