Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-167"
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"en.20000517.9.3-167"2
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"Mr President, I wish to begin by commenting on the necessity of conditionality. I agree with a number of the contributions here. I would also say that what we are facing here is not a tighter regime of conditionality than what Member States are actually pursuing in their bilateral development cooperation, as nowadays it is necessary to ensure that the use of resources corresponds to the goals that are set.
If we look at the substance, it is also the link to focusing better on social aspects in the HIPC countries – that is the key to what they have to do. There is also evidence of this being taken up by the World Bank and the IMF, with those institutions coming on board in terms of giving priority to these aspects. In a way, one could say that we are witnessing a move from the Washington consensus to the Copenhagen consensus.
The good part of this is that the IMF, with the poverty reduction strategy papers, is aligning itself with the goals the World Bank set a few years ago. All this shows that the fight against poverty is at the centre of this effort. So the combination of keeping the focus on perhaps narrowly defined HIPC countries and looking at the social consequences inside those countries is quite reasonable.
I turn to the matter of whether too few countries are part of the initiative. It would be wrong to think that we could simply broaden its scope and welcome all developing countries to it. There would be a number of adverse effects if we did so. Firstly, the cost of the HIPC initiative would increase dramatically because the wealthier these countries are, or the less poor, the bigger the debt they have acquired. So it must be borne in mind that this has to do with helping the poorest countries to determine those areas in which they can manage the remaining debt. The idea was never to cancel all debt from the Third World countries because that was totally impracticable. We are at a level of 0.22% or 0.23% for official development assistance, far from the 0.7% target that in principle everybody has agreed to and which only a limited number of countries have actually reached.
The 350bn would not be a manageable figure, and also the value for the poorest countries would be watered down if it were shared amongst the less poor middle-income countries.
I would say to Mrs Schörling that almost all money for HIPC is found from the existing development budgets. This is also the case for the billion of EDF money we are reallocating. The nice thing about it is that the ACP countries accepted it, and this is a reallocation that moves money from the relatively better-off to the poorest countries in the ACP group. So we are doing something very concrete by improving the poverty focus of our general activity in this reallocation. That part of it is highly welcome. The good thing is that we had the money so we were able to do something of real value as the only donor around, except for a few elite donors who are trying to shame the rest by moving forward and setting a good example – the usual gang. Otherwise, the European Union is the only one able to do something of real value.
Finally, I welcome very much the way this debate has gone. Parliament's interest is an important asset for the European Union."@en1
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