Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-03-Speech-3-290"
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"en.20030903.12.3-290"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by congratulating Mr Howitt on a report which the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats can vote for almost without reservation, and the direction of which we endorse in principle. I would like to focus this evening on a group of non-state actors to whom the report does not give explicit credit. The report mainly refers to two categories of non-state actor: the trade unions, on the one hand, and private sector actors, on the other. It omits to mention one group of non-state actors which also meet the ‘non-governmental organisation’ criterion, by which I mean the independent political foundations. Being non-profit organisations, they cannot be categorised as non-state actors from business or industry. They are autonomous, even though their policy programmes are based on the political movements. In every case, however, they are non-governmental organisations. They are funded from within Europe. Their management and funding are subject to the most stringent financial controls and performance audits. They are established in most Member States and in a total of more than eighty countries worldwide, and they are recognised by the local partners.
Most importantly, the foundations cover a wide range of fields: poverty alleviation, good governance, pluralist democracy, human rights, promoting SMEs, ‘green’ business, rule-of-law structures, control of security forces, healthcare, education and training in developing countries, etc. They develop synergies and work with many partners, especially NGOs. Until now, these foundations have mainly relied on national sources of funding. However, various functions have now been defined at European level for which these foundations have been qualifying themselves worldwide for decades. They are therefore natural partners for the EU in fulfilling these tasks.
If the Konrad Adenauer Foundation or the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, for example, had not been present in a country such as Zimbabwe in recent years, many NGOs and civil society would have been without major partners to support their commitment to human rights, democracy and good governance. For this reason, the independent political foundations should also be given particular consideration in the present and, above all, in the future debate."@en1
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