Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-202"
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". – Mr President, let me give a single set of figures to illustrate this in responding to Mr van Dam, who mentioned correctly the low level of implementation of TACIS and other programmes.
To Mr Dell'Alba, I would say that the aspect of human rights and the inclusion of clauses referring to human rights matters is a standard element. If you look at the whole new generation of country strategy papers that guides what we do and creates the basis for it, country by country for the whole world – this not only applies to the ACP countries but also to Asia and Latin America, etc. – these papers clearly give a strong, prominent role to the issues of governance, democratisation and human rights. We do not yet have the same kind of mechanisms as those embedded in the Cotonou Agreement, where we have a negotiated relationship, but this whole discussion is clearly an important element in the ongoing dialogue with all our partner countries.
Finally, to Mr Paasilinna, on how to improve the TACIS programme. In the light of the experience of Afghanistan over the last year, we are determined to step up the focus on this group of countries for reasons of conflict prevention, but certainly also because of a stronger sense of a closer neighbourly relationship with these countries. All this is emerging, and we have long spoken about the need for redefining and updating the character of our development cooperation with these countries. I feel confident that we will see increased activity, and I hope stronger financial activity. As has already been mentioned, an increase of 5.4%, giving a level of EUR 502 million, now makes this group of countries a main partner, including from a financial perspective.
When we took office at the end of 1999 the overall time it would take to work our way through the existing commitments at the level and the pace of spending at that time was 4.5 years. The following year this figure was down to 4.1 years and at the end of last year we were down to 3.66 years. This is a rough, primitive but correct measure showing that we are in fact reducing the gap between the decisions on commitment and the actual implementation in terms of spending per year. We are moving in the right direction but I have not been silent in trying to clarify to this Parliament what kind of a problem we had, the size of that problem and the complexity of it when we took office.
I normally characterise our foreign relations and development cooperation work by saying that it is nice that the Commission is big. We do have a critical mass but when we look at the legacy of the past it is also true that we have a critical mess. We are changing this gradually.
The figures mentioned by Mr Wijkman in this ongoing discussion on how much we do on health and education, the money devoted specifically to the Global Health Fund, is of course not the whole story. We are also discussing the totality of the money being spent and I need to come back to this figure of 35% as the target expenditure on the social sectors, which we agreed to with Parliament and which I still think is something we can deliver.
The use of the flexibility instrument for Afghanistan has already been addressed by my colleague, Mrs Schreyer. We should normalise our development cooperation and support to Afghanistan. The best solution would be to put it into the budget as a whole. Still, money is needed regardless of the source, and we need to more or less mop up resources to do what needs to be done in Afghanistan.
The figure quoted by Mrs Gill on renewable energy only regards a special initiative. The total figure for what we do in the field of energy also, especially with regard to renewable energy in development cooperation, is much bigger.
I would also point out that in Johannesburg we launched the energy initiative together with the Member States. We have backed this up by the information that, in total, Member States and the Commission have an annual level of spending for energy-related development activities of about EUR 0.7 billion.
I note with deep satisfaction that Mrs Gill quoted my colleague, Mr Patten, on the need to focus on poverty in what we do in this whole area. I could not agree more.
On the Global Health Fund, I can tell you that the 15 EU Member States have pledged a total of 64% of all the pledges made in support of this fund. We must also take this into account when taking the final decision on how much we consider adequate from the Commission for each year as we move forward."@en1
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