Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-16-Speech-2-315"
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"en.20010116.13.2-315"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, today, at last, we have an opportunity to express our opinion on the new cooperation agreement concluded with Bangladesh. Our fellow Member and rapporteur, Mr van den Bos, with whom I visited that country last year, has already stated that we have approved this. But he also outlined some of the central thoughts of the Committee on Development and Cooperation as to what the Community’s future action in Bangladesh should be.
Without wishing to repeat what has already been stated, I would nevertheless like to highlight some issues, on which we would also like to hear the Commission’s thoughts. This is the most heavily populated of the so-called ‘less-developed countries’. The fragility of its economic situation, marked by the predominance of the primary sector, which involves around 65% of the working population, and also the acuteness of social problems, are highlighted by the most varied indicators. And as if this were not enough, there are also the terrible disasters that constantly afflict the country. In addition to these factors, the political situation, as has already been mentioned, still shows a worrying degree of instability on all counts. We were able to confirm this for ourselves during our visit to this still young country. We saw the widespread poverty and the problems facing health and education but also some possibilities that are opening up, such as initiatives arising from cooperation, which are taking place at every level, either under the auspices of the government or which are being implemented by NGOs, the interesting use of microcredit, even though it benefits limited numbers of people, and the role and the particularly difficult situation of women. We also saw the disastrous effects of erosion and of successive floods, and also the dangers and consequences of the huge environmental and health disaster caused by the presence of arsenic in drinking water.
We were also able to see the shortcomings in the political arena, which were quite clear in the climate of great violence that marks relations between the government of Mrs Hasina Wajed of the Awani League and the opposition, particularly the Nationalist Party of Bangladesh, which does not participate on a regular basis in the work of the national parliament. We also saw the problems and delays in resolving the conflict with the people in the southern part of the country, specifically the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
As you all know, the European Union is Bangladesh’s main trading partner. Around 45% of that country’s exports come to the European Union. Bangladesh has also benefited from various development instruments, such as aid for technical and financial cooperation with Asian countries, food and humanitarian aid and exemption from customs duties on exports. The European Union has also provided Bangladesh with a considerable amount of external aid that has been earmarked for it and on which, in fact, the country is heavily dependent. We also know that the current agreement carries on from the 1976 agreement, and can be extended according to future needs.
The question we now face now with regard to the circumstances I have just described is to know what real objectives and priorities this new agreement hopes to achieve and in general, what effects we hope to have on sustainable development in the field of administration and on the participation of the public and public organisations in national life. In the resolution that we adopted in the Committee on Development and Cooperation, we indicated the directions that we felt to be the most appropriate. Mr van den Bos has already mentioned them in his speech. We now hope that the Commission will express its agreement or disagreement with the guidelines that we proposed. We also hope, however, that the Commission will state to what extent it will be willing to provide political support for Bangladesh in order to overcome the problems to which I referred earlier. Given the requests that the government and the opposition have already made we would also like the Commission to tell us how it intends to support the forthcoming electoral process and whether it will be sending a mission to observe the elections that have already been scheduled for this year."@en1
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