Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-320"
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"Thank you very much. I appreciate the passions stirred up by the issue of the Balkans, specifically Yugoslavia. However, my objective here today is rather more modest.
Secondly, the political conditions. Macro-financial assistance is not the correct instrument for imposing political conditions. We can therefore accept Amendment No 2 if its wording can be changed.
We have no problem with the references to the assistance which the Union is already carrying out, the approval of the Fund programmes, the reform of external aid, the margins of the Guarantee Fund and the multiannual financial aid package for Yugoslavia; Amendments Nos 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10 are therefore acceptable.
We have greater difficulty with the problem of the references to the distribution of the burden. We have no problem with Amendment No 5, but to make payment conditional upon what other donors do is neither a condition nor a system which is normally introduced in the case of macro-financial assistance. Amendment No 13, in its current specific form, would not be acceptable.
One point which you have raised is the reference to its exceptional assistance character. Of course it is exceptional assistance. Of course it is of a temporary nature. And this is already reflected in the text. Therefore, certain references do not seem necessary to us, such as its not exceeding 2003. I do not know if it will be necessary for us to reconsider the issue in 2003, but to say now that in no event are we going to do anything in 2003 does not seem correct to us. Neither does it seem necessary for Amendment No 7 to refer doubly to the concessional and temporary issue.
With regard to the obligatory consultations with, shall we say, bodies of a political nature, we believe that the political debate is taking place now and will take place in the Council. But once the conditions have been basically defined, the Economic and Financial Committee must be the correct body to carry out the control of what in reality we are going to talk about, that is to say, the practical application of the proposals. We therefore believe that other types of conditions are not reasonable, such as those established in Amendments Nos 12, 14 and the first part of Amendment No 16.
You request additional reports to Parliament. We are thinking of the reports proposed in Amendments Nos 16, 18 and 19. We can accept the one in Amendment No 19, if it refers to information on the previous year. It is very difficult to give information on the same year unless it is excessively delayed information, but the production of additional general reports, as well as the one we present every year, on macro-financial assistance, we believe to be an unnecessary bureaucratic burden. Nevertheless, we do understand that Parliament wishes to control and know what is happening with these issues. We are therefore at your disposal to provide you with information on the implementation of this aid, whenever Parliament may ask for it. But we believe that it is much better to react to specific proposals than to establish this type of formal obligation, which does not always have the necessary interest.
I would lastly like to comment on certain precise dates which are laid down in relation to the limits for the first and second payments. You say that the first payment must be made before 31 December and the second before 30 June. There are two problems. One problem is bureaucratic, administrative: will we make it by 31 December? This is not the real difficulty. The real difficulty is that in the system of macro-financial assistance we are working with certain economic policy conditions and these payments can only be made in the event that these conditions are met. Of course, our objective is the same as yours: to implement aid as soon as possible, to pay it as quickly as possible and in this respect we are going to continue working with Parliament in complete harmony.
Finally, and I will end here, I would like to thank Parliament for its support for the Commission proposal on the granting of macro-financial assistance to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I hope that at the next Council we can adopt a response which will allow us to quickly confront, as Mr Brok said, this important challenge and be coherent with our own past positions.
Of course we must react to the events of recent weeks as a European Community, offering a significant message of support to the Yugoslavian authorities and supporting the stabilisation and economic reform efforts made by that country. I especially welcome the efforts made by this House, and in particular Mr Brok. The acceleration of the process has been complex in recent weeks and this makes it difficult for the different committees to express their points of view on the proposal we are discussing today.
As I said before, our objective is limited. It is important, but it is limited, given the difficult economic and financial situation of Yugoslavia, which requires the international community to offer significant financial support. The Yugoslavian authorities have implemented important economic reform programmes, which have been welcomed and accepted by the international community.
You have referred to the fundamental issue of the Conference of Donors. This Conference has shown support for the economic transition and recovery programme, produced in collaboration with the World Bank and also with the European Commission. The good news has been – and Mr Lange has referred to it – the existence of sufficient funds to finance everything that was intended. It has even been possible to exceed the USD 1 250 million which was envisaged as aid for Yugoslavia.
What contribution is the European Community making at the moment? We are cooperating via two channels. The first channel is EUR 230 million, in 2001, which is the Community aid for reconstruction, democracy and stabilisation in the area, the so-called ‘CARDS’ aid. However, as well as this, we have proposed 300 million in macro-financial assistance with a very specific aim, that is the reduction of the balance of payments deficit. Of course, we intend to extend the mandate which allows Yugoslavia to receive EIB loans.
To this end, the Commission made its proposal, referred to by Mr Brok, of 23 May, trying to react, as he said, quickly and to persuade the Council of Ministers to accept. As he has also said, there has been a certain change in the Council of Ministers, lending more weight to loans and less to donations, a change which we in the Commission do not agree with. I would like to expressly thank Mr Brok for his support for the Commission’s position.
However, we are talking about a proposal for macro-financial assistance. And every time we have given this sort of aid, we have done so with certain conditions within the European Union and I do not believe that there is any argument for changing that model. We are talking about aid which is complementary to aid implemented by other international institutions and bilateral donors, aid which is intended to prevent the external financial restrictions suffered by that country. That means that we are working in conjunction with the Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We are referring to 2001, although it may be considered for future years, but, at the moment, we are talking about the restrictions for 2001 and next year. This type of aid, as you know, is conditional upon certain economic policy demands and is proposed within a stand-by programme of the International Monetary Fund for one year.
As I said before, our proposal was 120 million in donation and 180 in loan, the latter for 15 years under conditions similar to those for other countries. The basic agreement in the Council has reduced the donation to 75 million, leaving the rest for loans. We consider that, given Yugoslavia’s high level of debt and its other difficulties, and coherence with other types of similar modernisations which we have carried out in the past, the Commission’s proposal is coherent with our practice. We will therefore continue to insist in the Council that the conditions we have proposed be approved.
Mr Brok’s report proposes a series of amendments; I will later provide you with a note which explains our exact position. Our view of the amendments is as follows, to put it very briefly: first, it is not necessary to include the references to CARDS in this particular case, since we are talking about another type of aid, and not about CARDS aid, which is of a different nature. Certain amendments do not therefore seem acceptable, such as Amendments Nos 1, 11, 15 and 19."@en1
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