Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-160"
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"en.20000411.7.2-160"2
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". – Mr President, we discussed a number of issues in the Commission today, including the broad economic policy guidelines which have been the subject of a statement by my colleague Commissioner Solbes elsewhere in Parliament during the course of the afternoon. But I would like to focus on two issues touching on external relations and one of those issues in particular. Briefly though, I will first of all mention our communication on election observation and assistance, which we will now be publishing and which I will look forward to discussing with Parliament over the coming weeks and months.
Now I have heard concerns expressed that we are taking on new responsibilities when we should be focusing our efforts. I understand that concern, but the rapid reaction facility does not create new responsibilities, it tries to get better mileage out of what we already have. It builds on existing Community instruments, putting them to concerted use in a new framework. It can cover action in areas as diverse as human rights work, election monitoring, mediation, institution building and media support, customs and border management, mine action, support for police operations, civil emergency assistance, resettlement and rehabilitation.
There is an inevitable, indeed necessary, area of overlap with existing instruments. I repeat: the facility does not create a new instrument. It provides a mechanism for drawing more effectively on the existing ones and the overlap is limited by the procedural nature of the rapid reaction facility and the time limit to its interventions.
The facility is a kind of quick-start package. It will allow us to react in time and if necessary, to take the initiative in urgent circumstances. In doing so, we will be better placed to put the wealth of Community experience and resources to optimal use in the interest of the Union as a whole. But rapid reaction facility action is not meant to last longer than absolutely necessary. If it needs to be pursued beyond the immediate time frame of the crisis situation, it should be taken over as soon as practicable by the regular geographic or thematic Community instrument most suited to manage it in the longer term. That is why the Commission proposes a rather modest budget allocation for the rapid reaction facility: about EUR 30 million for this year and EUR 40 million for subsequent years.
We need to have sufficient funding available to get crisis action started quickly, but we do not want to tie up large resources, which could and should be put to better use in regular programmes. Similarly we do not want to create a large new bureaucracy which would hang around waiting for the next crisis to happen. I have dealt with that point earlier in my remarks.
In sum, I am convinced that the facility will help us both materially – I would have loved to have had it in hand when we launched the Energy for Democracy scheme last autumn – and institutionally by providing a concrete Commission contribution to the evolving ESDP. It is not an ideal solution. My own favourite economist and guru, Jane Jacobs, points out that everything is disappointing in practice. There are rarely ideal solutions, but I do think that it is a very workable solution and if, when we review the programme in three years, we find we no longer need it because we have integrated similar rapid reaction mechanisms in the regular programmes for external assistance, no one would be happier than me.
I have to say straight away by way of a confession – and since Dr Paisley is not in the House I can probably make a confession – the paper does not represent a radical new approach, but it does attempt to bring order to an activity, which has become a very real growth area in recent years. We have spent EUR 150 million on this important activity. It is now clearly a first- pillar activity following the adoption of the regulations, which provide a legal basis for human rights and democratisation activity.
As Members of Parliament will recognise, the communication invites both Parliament and the Council to work with us on a more coordinated approach. It invites everyone to try to learn the lessons of the past. It is a very practical document. It suggests that we need greater coherence in what we are doing and I am looking forward to hearing the views of Members of Parliament on the document, which I hope they will regard as an important and useful contribution to a debate which is going to become more important, not less important, over the coming years.
Let me turn to a subject on which I would like to address the Parliament at rather greater length. It is a subject which is very close to my own heart – imperfect a specimen though that may be. It is the rapid reaction facility, which we have been discussing for some time and on which we have come to some conclusions.
My colleague, Commissioner Nielson, was talking a moment or two ago about the EU-African summit in Cairo just over a week ago. It is true that the President of the Commission, my colleagues Pascal Lamy and Poul Nielson and myself were all confronted during that summit with a litany of complaints about the slow delivery of European Union assistance. The people making those complaints were very often justified in doing so – not always – but very often. It is not a new problem, as Members of Parliament will know – particularly Members who have been on delegation visits to other countries. I have been frustrated at our slow and cumbersome procedures ever since I have arrived at the Commission last autumn. I want to say once again that this is not a problem created by our staff, who work extremely hard, thin on the ground as they are. It is a problem which they have been labouring under for a number of years.
The problems of slow decision-making and delivery are both structural and cultural. Our procedures are old fashioned, they are as I said 'cumbersome'. But the traditional legislative approach to Community business is also sometime ill-suited to the fast changing realities in external relations. This is particularly true for conflict prevention and it is particularly true for crisis management efforts.
Today we are criticised for being slow, today we are criticised for being overtaken too frequently by events, and I think to borrow a cliché 'history is not going to wait for us any longer', nor will our international partners, nor even will the Council, and they are right. We have to make sure that we are ready and capable of acting when action is needed, not six weeks later, not six months later. We have to do better and we can do better. Now we have embarked on an ambitious reform of our external assistance programmes, designed to bring a serious improvement in their effectiveness and in their speed of delivery. We will present our proposals in the next few weeks. Some things we can do relatively quickly, others will take longer if, for example, complex legal changes are required. The rapid reaction facility is something that in our judgement we can do fairly quickly if we have the support of Parliament and if we have the support of the Council. I hope that support will be forthcoming because we have time to lose. The Helsinki European Council called on us, in the context of development of the Union's crisis management structures within the ESDP, to set up a mechanism for rapid reaction. Inertia is only part of our problem today.
We must also be able to combine different tools more effectively and flexibly into a tailor-made mix to suit the particular situation. The rapid reaction facility responds to these needs. It is intended to allow us to draw without delay on existing Community resources and expertise to address specific crisis situations, complementing the valuable work already undertaken by ECHO in the humanitarian field. I am suggesting a mechanism with the following broad characteristics. First, there are the urgent time-limited operations in situations of crisis or emerging crisis. Action should not normally last for more than nine months. Second, where longer-term intervention is necessary, actions under the rapid reaction facility will anticipate operations under existing instruments, which can take over the action using the normal procedures. Third, as with ECHO, the procedures must be streamlined. The Commission should mostly be able to act under its own responsibility and if it has to consult Member States it will be on the simplest possible advisory basis. Fourth, the management of the rapid reaction facility will be the responsibility of a small team, the crisis coordination unit in the Directorate-General for External Relations. I do not want to build up large structures where people create work while waiting for a crisis to happen.
The added value of the rapid reaction facility is speed and flexibility in Community intervention in crisis situations. It will help us to overcome procedural hurdles which have slowed us down in the past and it will allow for the combination of several instruments within a single action and for a single purpose."@en1
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