Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-253"
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"en.20020116.17.3-253"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Rod and congratulate him on his excellent work on this matter and stress that, broadly speaking, I agree with the ideas he puts forward in his explanatory statement and with the conclusions he proposed and which we approved in the Committee on Development and Cooperation.
I shall, therefore, limit myself to a few brief observations. I wish to say, first of all, that, to my mind, the greatest success of this new Convention lies in the very fact that its moment has actually arrived, given the long and difficult obstacles that we have had to overcome. These difficulties and obstacles began with the recommendation to end our partnerships with the ACP countries and culminated in the untimely and rather inconvenient problem of migration, already in the final stage of negotiations. The final outcome of these negotiations, in addition to the establishment of a new Convention for a period of twenty years, is therefore, to my mind, to be considered one of the more positive aspects.
There are also other, more substantial reasons for the Convention, however. For example, a greater call for the participation of civil society, especially if this is given a broad meaning and if it is not at variance with the cooperation and support deserved by the central administrations of the ACP States, which suffer, as a rule, from considerable structural weakness. This also applies to the regionalisation that has been planned, if this is undertaken carefully, if it is not imposed and if it does not represent an undesirable fragmentation of the ACP countries.
It should be pointed out, however, that there are also aspects of this new Convention that make us rather apprehensive. Firstly, the systematic call for the imposition of unilateral conditions and objectives which, apart from having the potential to destroy a partnership that we want to be of equals, could also undermine the choices made by the ACP countries themselves on their own development policies. Secondly, the rapid move towards enshrining the liberalising rationale of the WTO which, as we know, has been particularly damaging to the least-developed countries. These are aspects which we cannot sweep under the carpet and which, like the clear change of direction towards the East of the European Union – I would remind you that none of the ACP countries is yet on the list of the ten countries that benefit most from European cooperation – may compromise a partnership that we would like to be beneficial, mutually advantageous and capable of ending the cycle of underdevelopment and the enormous poverty that affects those countries."@en1
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