Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-14-Speech-2-272"
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"en.20001114.9.2-272"2
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". – This has been an excellent debate even though, by this time in the evening, the attendance is restricted to the
. However, it is good to see some familiar faces in the Chamber.
Members of Parliament have tabled a significant number of amendments. I want to comment on them as they relate to our twin proposals on the agency and the regulation.
The Commission has proposed an assistance regulation which is deliberately simple and clear. It sets out the over-arching objectives for assistance for the main principles governing programming, comitology for programmes, but not for individual projects. And it also proposes simple decision arrangements for programmes run by the European Reconstruction Agency.
Let me take up a number of the broad points that have been raised by Parliament, first the role of the Commission and its financial responsibilities in relation to the running of the agency. The Commission takes very seriously its responsibilities for the implementation of the Community budget. A number of new amendments underline this responsibility by referring to Article 274 of the Treaty. But in order to exercise this responsibility we need legal instruments which allow us to act quickly and flexibly.
Second, Parliament wants us to refer more specifically to sectoral priorities. We want, in the light of experience, to retain as much flexibility as possible. But we can accept several of Parliament's amendments which urge us to include mention of key sectoral priorities such as assistance for education, vocational training, environment, civil society and NGOs, ethnic reconciliation and the return of displaced persons. In the same spirit we can accept the proposal to include a reference to the Feira European Council conclusions in the preamble to the regulation. Parliament's resolution on the Commission's communication on the stabilisation and association process also deserves to be mentioned in the preamble. We think it makes more sense to do it there than to build it into the article on conditionality.
Naturally we can also accept the proposal that the guidelines which the Commission will adopt should reflect the search for greater efficiency that underlines our reforms.
I just want to add the point that it is important, having put forward a regulation which attempts to simplify things, not to allow the regulations now to be hung about with caveats and qualifications and spectacular quantities of red tape.
As Mr Staes said: We do not want people throwing spanners in the works. If we cannot have a clear and simple regulation then, frankly, we would be better off with no regulation at all. To be clear: we can accept the spirit, provided changes can be made in certain cases to the wording, of Amendments Nos 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, the first part of 11, the first part of 13, 16 partially, 17, 18, 19 partially and 20, 21, 24, 28 in the first part, 31 and partially 37.
The Commission's position on the overall sum we estimated was necessary for the region, the so-called financial reference amount and its compatibility with the financial perspectives, is well-known. We do not think, as the House knows, that it is necessary to make an explicit reference to this in the regulation. Despite Mr Lagendijk's eloquence, I do not think it is necessary, but he made one point which is fundamentally true and it was made, in another sense, by Mr Westendorp when both of them argued that these regulations are all very well but if there is not an adequate budget to cover the political priorities of the European Union then we are wasting our time.
Mr Westendorp, said that the Council could not – I think this was the implication of his remarks – replicate the New Testament and perform miracles with loaves and fishes. That may be regarded by some Members of some Councils as being a touch brutal in its assessment of the powers of the Council but it is entirely true. We have to deal with finite budgets but I very much hope that the budget which is available for the external actions of the European Union reflects the political priorities of the European Union. That is the discussion which we have been having with the Council in recent weeks and months and the Commission or Parliament do not come badly out of that discussion. I should have thought, in particular, that the experience of the last two months has shown that the Commission's proposal on financing was not as eccentric as some people suggested at the time.
Let me now turn to the second proposal on the table, the European Agency for Reconstruction and, in doing so, I want to pay warm tribute, as Mr Lagendijk did during his own remarks, to the excellent job that the board, the director and the staff have done on the ground in Kosovo. They are a terrific team and I am not surprised that the results they have achieved are extremely impressive. They have earned their good reputation for delivering results and I know that Parliament's own delegation to Kosovo in May was as impressed by them as I have been.
I do not intend to traverse the ground that was covered by the Minister earlier in his remarks about the Zagreb Summit. I totally endorse all the objectives which he set out. That summit is taking place in rather happier conditions than we perhaps imagined when the presidency first conceived of it.
It clearly makes sense to learn lessons from the past six months of the Agency's operations and to see how we can help it to work more effectively. This is essential now that the Agency will be responsible for the whole of the FRY.
Our main aim is to clarify the role of the governing board. It has to take on responsibility for the examination and the approval of reconstruction programmes which will be submitted to the Commission for decision. We also want to simplify decision-making. According to the new regulation the Commission will be permitted to adopt programmes proposed by the Agency without having to consult the management committee.
Let me make it clear that responsibility for the formal adoption of the programmes remains with the Commission. It is the Commission that decides on the desirability of these programmes; it is the Commission which is responsible for the implementation of the budget; it is the Commission which adopts the programmes.
A number of amendments seek to ensure that the Agency acts under the direct and sole responsibility of the Commission and thereby to ensure that the Commission is solely responsible for the Agency's management before the European Parliament, the Court of Auditors and OLAF. I want to clarify this. The Agency has a certain degree of autonomy, like all European agencies. This is the position under the current institutional set-up and the autonomy, which the Agency now has, must be respected unless the institutional structure of the Agency is modified. That does not detract from the full responsibility that the Commission assumes, as the Treaty requires, for the execution of the Community budget. I would like to thank Parliament for the sensible and pragmatic way it has accepted the current structure of the Agency. I know Parliament's views on this issue and the Commission will take these into account in the design of any future executive agencies.
The language regime is a further sensitive issue. I hope that Parliament will understand the sense of the proposals that I put forward in May and will continue to work constructively with others on this very difficult issue but I cannot offer to support Parliament's amendment to remove the unanimity requirement which would contradict the view of the College.
We can accept those amendments which are designed to remove the requirement for a further Council decision to extend the mandate of the Agency to the whole of the FRY. I can accept, too, those amendments which refer to the General Affairs decision of 9 October, to cooperation with NGOs, to the restoration of civil society and the rule of law, to the payment for services provided by the Agency, to third parties, to the possibility of creating further operational centres, to the responsibility of the director for the implementation of the work programme and the structure of the Agency's budget.
This means that we can accept the spirit, provided changes can be made in certain cases to the wording, of Amendment Nos 1, 2, 6, 8, 10 in part, 11, 37, 16, 27 and 33. We will look carefully at the desirability of producing an explicit list of issues which the governing board should examine. We will do this in the interest of clarifying its role; that concerns Amendments Nos 21 and 22. We will also examine the timetable which you propose for the adoption of the Agency's budget while respecting the principle of good budgetary programming and compatibility with the Community's budgetary procedures. This concerns Amendments Nos 29 and 30.
Let me reiterate my thanks to Parliament for its hard work on these issues. We have made real headway in south east Europe. This proposal should allow us to take advantage of the new opportunity we have, to make a decisive contribution as the European Union to lasting peace and prosperity across the whole region.
I have to say that the European Union did not come frightfully well out of the history of south east Europe during the 1990s. I hope we make a better fist of things during the next decade and this regulation will provide us with some of the prosaic means of doing so.
I want to focus on the regulations. I should like, first of all, to thank the House for its excellent and speedy work during its examination of these two draft regulations. I should like to congratulate the rapporteurs of the relevant committees: firstly, Mr Westendorp y Cabeza, who has considerable on-the-ground experience of these matters in Bosnia, and also Mr Lagendijk, with whom we have a regular dialogue on southeast Europe. He is at least one other human being with whom I can share the distinction of having read Misha Glenny on the Balkans. I should also like to thank the following Members: Mr Staes, Mr Färm and Mr Gargani for the quality of their reports and opinions.
These two proposals respond to two key Union priorities: providing assistance to southeastern Europe and providing it as rapidly and as efficiently as possible. The European Councils of Lisbon and Feira underlined the importance that the Union gives to the integration of this region into the economic and political mainstream of Europe. Our policy for achieving that is the stabilisation and association process. Of course the European Union is making a leading contribution through that process to the work of the Stability Pact. The heads of government have also confirmed the Union's determination to back this process with technical and economic assistance. The return of democracy to Serbia, thanks to the determination and courage of the Serb people and the democratic forces there, offers the chance now of building prosperity across the whole region.
More than ever the European Union has to live up to the commitments it has made. To do that we must have the right legal instruments, flexible procedures and efficient management. The reform of external assistance which the Commission adopted on 16 May demonstrates our determination to improve radically the speed, quality and visibility of external assistance. In southeast Europe this determination has already brought concrete results.
In Kosovo the taskforce which we deployed within days of the end of the conflict and, in the last six months, the European Agency for Reconstruction have achieved a track record of delivering help on time and efficiently. The figures bear this out: 84% of the funds allocated for reconstruction under Obnova – in 1998 to 2000 EUR 444.5 million – had been committed by the end of October 2000. Seventy percent of the funds committed had been contracted and 43% of the contracted funds had been paid.
We have achieved rapid results in Serbia too, where the Commission, in the space of just over four weeks, has drawn up an emergency assistance programme worth in total EUR 200 million. It was agreed by the Commission last week and the first trucks of heating fuel started rolling into Serbia at the weekend, ahead of schedule and ahead of most other donors. This programme is going to ratchet up every day from now on: a contract for imports of EUR 30 million in electricity was signed today with the Serbian Electricity Company and should come on-stream within days. Every day counts in this situation.
Our reforms have started to bring results too in Bosnia, where the implementation of assistance, in terms of amounts contracted and disbursed has improved dramatically since our delegation in Sarajevo was reinforced last year and authority was delegated to it. The results that have been achieved are extremely encouraging.
These are the results of which the European Parliament too can be proud. It was the European Parliament that sounded the alarm about weak management in Bosnia. It was Parliament which supported the Commission's proposal to create the European Agency for Reconstruction. It was Parliament which insisted on a single regulatory framework for assistance to the region and it was Parliament, in its role as budgetary authority, which made sure that funds were made available for emergency assistance for Serbia, without delay. This is good progress but we need to build on it. There is still plenty of room for improvement. That is the purpose of these two proposals."@en1
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