Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-174"
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"en.20000516.8.2-174"2
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"Mr President, I hope Parliament will excuse me if shortly after making a brief presentation I have to leave, but this is, as Parliament knows, very much the collective work of the RELEX Commissioners as a whole and very much the shared work of my colleague, Commissioner Nielson and myself. Commissioner Nielson will still be here to make his own contribution to this report and to answer any questions which may arise. The function I have to attend is a joint meeting of two committees which was specially arranged to discuss a number of external assistance issues so I hope Parliament will be understanding.
I think it is fair to say that the proposals that we have put forward go right to the heart of the issues that are raised in the White Paper on reform and it is extremely important for us to demonstrate that the reform of our external assistance programmes is the flagship or one of the flagships, for an overall reform process. People occasionally get a little bored when one talks about internal procedures but what they should recognise is what we are discussing in these particular proposals: ways in which, first of all, we can get assistance to people more rapidly and effectively and, secondly, ways in which we can change the image of the European Union around the world. All of us have, alas, experienced too frequently occasions when instead of us getting the credit for what we are trying to do on behalf of Europe's taxpayers, we get blamed for not doing it a lot more effectively and a lot more rapidly. I hope that is a problem which we will be able to tackle.
Very briefly, it is worth reminding ourselves what the background to this issue is. We have seen a threefold increase in external assistance commitments managed by the SCR over the last 10 years. That has been driven by events and by political pressures; a recognition of the responsibilities we should discharge in Central and Eastern Europe – the recognition which that triggered of our responsibilities in the Mediterranean. It is worth noting that our assistance programmes in the Mediterranean have increased four and a half times since 1990. Then there is the Balkans crisis where the attempts to put in place a common foreign and security policy are being particularly tested. While our external assistance programmes themselves have grown very rapidly, staff resources have failed to keep pace. The Commission has 2.9 staff for every EUR 10 million that we manage. That compares with an average figure about twice that for Member States – the figure is 5.7 but it goes as high as 9 for some Member States and 4.2 for the World Bank. One of the consequences of that has been the increasing use of technical assistance offices which has been much criticised by Parliament and by the Court of Auditors on the grounds of weak monitoring and a lack of political control. It is worth noting that we have spent about EUR 170 million a year on the 80 technical assistance offices which is equivalent to the cost of 800 staff working for the Commission.
A consequence of all this is that the SCR today has over EUR 21 billion in outstanding commitments awaiting payments. That is an embarrassingly large figure. I do not blame the staff of the SCR who work extremely hard in very difficult circumstances, but there are not enough of them. They have had to operate with extremely difficult procedures. They have also had to operate against a background of Member States second, third and fourth guessing every implementation decision that we try to make. We have brought forward in the document, which has now been made public, our proposals for dealing with this problem.
As honourable Members will know, over the years Parliament has put forward a number of proposals including the idea that we should externalise the management of our overseas aid. That remains a possibility for the long term though it would take some time because one would first have to get in place the necessary legal framework. However my principal concern at the moment is not how we get from A to Z – that often seems rather easier than getting from A to B. What we have to do – whatever the long term objective may be is – to find better ways of managing our external assistance straightaway. We have put forward a number of proposals. We have put forward proposals for improving programming: making sure that all the RELEX Commissioners share responsibility for programming – we have suggested the reuniting of the project cycle from identification to implementation – we think the present split has not worked well. What we propose to do is to create a new implementation body replacing the SCR which we think should be called Europe Aid. It would be initially an office under a board made up of all the External Relations Commissioners though, as I say, the option of moving to externalisation in the longer term remains on the table.
We want to devolve more responsibility to delegations and, where possible, to national authorities in the field. We have proposed special treatment for the pre-accession strategy: humanitarian assistance and macro-financial assistance with fully integrated management. That means, for example, transferring the residual SCR functions for PHARE to the Directorate-General for Enlargement. We have proposed taking urgent measures to tackle the backlog of old and dormant projects. We are writing to the relevant chairmen of parliamentary committees and to the Court of Auditors to explain our approach.
I do not want to go on for very much longer, except to say this: where will the resources come from to manage and run our programmes in the proposed office, Europe Aid, rather better in the future than we have managed in the past? We have to take our turn with others in the Commission in arguing our corner in the peer group process for the assistance we think is required to manage our programmes effectively. We may, as a result, present the budgetary authority with a rectifying letter to the 2001 budget proposals in September. That is for the future.
The simple point I want to make is this: we cannot go on as we have. In my judgement it is simply not an option. We have to do better. We are not bidding for a bigger empire. The budgetary authority will ultimately have to judge the right scale of European Union external aid programmes. However, my only aim is to put the Commission in a position where it can run these programmes competently. I have to say very bluntly to Parliament that there are two possibilities: either the budgetary authority agrees with our ideas and will then try to implement them from 2001, or else, in order to manage what our programmes amount to more competently, we will be obliged to propose very large cuts. We cannot go on in a situation in which we are not prepared to provide the resources to manage effectively the money that is voted by the budgetary authority for our external assistance programmes. We have to be prepared to face up to the management and administrative consequences of what we are trying to do around the world, otherwise the people who suffer are those who should be receiving our help to enable them to read and write or live a better and healthier life or create the institutions of good governance in their communities. They are the people who suffer as well as the European Union's reputation.
I am sure this will be a long debate. I am sure that Parliament will have a considerable contribution to make to the discussion over the next few months. However, my impression after a few months in this job is that Parliament wants as badly as the Commission to deliver a more competently run assistance programme all around the world."@en1
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