Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-175"
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"en.20010228.9.3-175"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I voted for the Gemelli report in committee and I will vote for it in this Chamber. I fully support the report and, like all the Members, I can find no fault with a work that I feel has been carried out conscientiously with a great deal of commitment, and with the cooperation of all the members of the Committee.
I would like to take advantage of this time available to me to raise two or three points of a different kind. Whenever, either here or elsewhere, I discuss development or development cooperation, the question that springs involuntarily to my lips is, as some of the Members have said, "How can this be?" If we consider the situation of 40 years ago and then we look at the way things are today, we realise that the North-South divide has widened, that the gap between the poorest and richest countries is wider. How can this be?
We must endeavour to respond to this question or we will be in danger of never being able to make any headway when we discuss the subject. Why is it, as Mr Gemelli asked, that there are more poor people, fewer educated people and new illnesses, and that the conditions of children, babies and women have deteriorated. What are the reasons for this?
In my opinion, there is one basic reason. We talk about development policy and we talk about public resources: these represent a tiny, tiny stream flowing from North to South; but then there is a very big stream, a huge river of private resources which flows from South to North. Therefore, the problem is whether the Member States and the European Union and the other rich countries will succeed in establishing a development policy capable of promoting coherence between public and private policies. Of course, this would not mean depriving the private sector of the ultimate goal of its initiative but putting more pressure on it more than we have done thus far. This is the point. If we do not do this, then we will be like King Canute trying to stop the waves.
So what is the risk now, Commissioner Nielson? You know better than me: it is that, in the current globalisation and in the information society, those who are excluded from wealth are also excluded from knowledge. In other words, they are twice excluded. This is a serious risk and that is why we need to take radical decisions now, at this historic time.
With regard to the issue of debt and of whether our countries have made good the commitments undertaken 25 years ago to allocate at least 0.7% of their respective GDPs to development policies: well, only one country out of 15 – Sweden, which has the honour of holding the Presidency of the Union – has stood by this undertaking. We need fresh support for development policy, support which has thus far not been forthcoming, from all the economic systems in which we live, not just from the States or public institutions.
One last point, Commissioner Nielson: I have also read the Commission's action plan, but we are not talking about that. We requested an information campaign in Europe on cooperation policy and public aid policy. I have seen no sign of this. There can be no support for a development policy without the backing of the European public, and how will we obtain such backing if an information campaign is not staged within the European Union, not outside it?"@en1
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