Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-15-Speech-1-089"
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"en.20000515.6.1-089"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, a few days ago the Committee on Development and Cooperation unanimously approved the recommendation which is today being considered by Parliament. It had previously made a considerable effort to speed up and rationalise the negotiation of the issue, believing that voting on the new European Parliament and Council regulation on development cooperation with South Africa was an important and urgent matter.
During the previous five years the budgetary framework had been EUR 125 million per year. The Council, with a view to budgetary restriction, decreased that allocation in its proposal and set it at EUR 112.5 million per year.
For our part, while we are signing an important Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement with South Africa, it does not seem politically acceptable to send a message of financial cuts. On the contrary, we should at least maintain and, where possible, increase these contributions, if only as a token gesture, although we share the concern with regard to the available resources.
Finally, the proposal approved by the Committee on Development and Cooperation, on whose behalf I am speaking, was extremely reasonable: the EUR 123.5 million already allocated for 2000 and the EUR 127 million for each of the subsequent six years, amounting to a budgetary framework of EUR 885.5 million for the seven years laid down in the regulation.
Both amendments seem well-considered. The aim is to avoid a third reading, put an end to the current intolerable legal vacuum and provide significant political impetus to our development cooperation with South Africa.
By asking you to support our proposals, we hope that the common sense and moderation which Parliament is showing will be understood by the Council. We also hope that these proposals are acceptable to the Commission, despite the fact that theirs – 25 million for the commitology question and 850.5 million for the budgetary framework – are somewhat different to the ones that we are presenting.
If we are not understood, it will be entirely down to the Council or the Commission that we become involved in a third reading, with the consequences which the lack of a proper legal basis may have on the projects in operation in our development cooperation with South Africa.
The figure for the budgetary framework suggested by the Commission, which is very close to our own proposal, should in any event have arrived at the Committee on Development and Cooperation on time, so that Parliament could have approved it and above all with the certainty that, in the event that we had adopted it, the Council would also have accepted it.
It was important because South Africa is one of the countries which receives the most funding from the European Union for its development process. It was urgent because the regulation which forms the basis of this cooperation and which has been in force for five years expired on 31 December 1999, from which date the different procedures in operation were left without a proper legal basis.
It is very worrying that we should find ourselves in such a situation. In fact, in the first six months of 1999, our Parliament considered the first text proposed by the Commission, adopting six amendments and forwarding them to the Council for their consideration.
This is where the delay occurred, since the Council took no less than eight months to present their position to us. This took us past the expiry date and led us to the legal vacuum which I just mentioned.
The Council finally presented its proposal. Their text adopted most of the amendments which Parliament had approved on first reading and, in particular, the Council put considerably more emphasis on the references to combating poverty and achieving the international development objectives, agreed on the basis of United Nations conventions and resolutions.
Having examined the Council’s proposal, the Committee on Development and Cooperation considered it necessary to try to prevent the negotiation being prolonged by a third reading. In other words, we intended to accept everything that seemed reasonable and limit our amendments to things which were absolutely essential, and even then in a spirit of great moderation. There only remained two questions which appear in the amendments and which, in the form of a recommendation, our committee is submitting to the plenary.
The first question refers to commitology. The Council wanted the Committee of Experts to control all cooperation projects relating to South Africa with a budget of over EUR 3 million. However, we believed that this committee should guide and monitor the broad approaches to development cooperation with South Africa and only directly control larger projects, leaving the smaller ones to the normal procedures, which are the Commission’s responsibility.
Having considered all the main issues, the amendment we are presenting today finally raises the Council’s proposal from 3 to 5 million, and this committee, whose members represent the various Member States, will therefore have fewer projects to deal with and will therefore be able to concentrate more on a global view of such an important field of action.
The second proposal concerns the budgetary framework for development cooperation between the European Union and South Africa for the 7-year period, including 2000, which is referred to in the regulation under discussion."@en1
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