Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-176"
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"en.20000516.8.2-176"2
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"Mr President, I do not feel like an emperor without clothes, but you can judge for yourself. The situation is that we had to do something not just to integrate the project cycle in terms of the line management of activities. We also had to do something concerning squaring the circle organisationally giving substance to my political overall responsibility for development policy. We have done this without changing the portfolios that were defined.
The solution we have reached is to create a board of directors which will oversee and politically be the managerial part of running the new office or EuropeAid or whatever SCR is going to be called. My role on that board will be that of the chief executive officer. Commissioner Patten will be chairman, reflecting the position he already has at the head of the table being the ultimate coordinator of all RELEX Commissioners' activities. We are in a sense structuring the political roles that have been defined and we are doing it in such a way that I think it really does have a chance of functioning.
There are two elements in this which will contribute to better coherence and better political consistency. One is what I have already mentioned with a closer political involvement in the management of the actual implementation. The other one is the quality-support group which will have its secretariat in DG Development. The role is to make sure that the formulation of the different programmes, including those in DG RELEX, is consistent with the policy and principles that we have defined. All in all, I think this is a good attempt at doing things given the way things were defined last July.
This will also concentrate a lot of attention among all RELEX Commissioners on the problem of whether or not we actually are delivering. We have to get out of the culture of commitment and into the culture of delivering. What we are doing here will be part of that change. We also talk about ownership in our partner countries as being a major problem. The reality, because of the way we are organised in the Commission, is that ownership on our side is extremely vague and problematic. This is going to change as a consequence of the reform we are putting forward now.
Finally, I will address the issue of the risk of what happens if we do not get the staff and the resources to do the job. Clearly continuing the way things are now is not acceptable, it is not possible. We have to make the point as clearly as Commissioner Patten just did which means that we want those resources. We have commitments, we have an agreement with 71 ACP states, we have the Member States backing that and accepting the next ninth European Development Fund. All this is part of the promises we have made already, so there is really no alternative to getting the people to do the job. But how to do it – this is a problem we cannot solve alone, which is why we are appealing as strongly and clearly as we are; and we make no secret of the fact that if the budget authority will not make it possible to get the staff, we will not be able to do the job. This is the situation as we see it. We do not want to invest our own role as Commissioners in fighting a losing battle. We want to fight a battle we can be proud of participating in."@en1
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