Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-323"
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"Mr President, firstly, I too wish to say thank you to Mrs Wallström. I am well aware of her commitment to these issues, and the information she provided about what has happened following the Johannesburg Summit was welcome.
Finally, I wish, just like Mrs Wallström, naturally to focus upon the issues related to poverty. We need more aid, but also better aid. For this, reforms to the trade system are needed, as I say. From that point of view, what happened in Cancún is of course very unfortunate.
I also wish to thank Mr de Roo for his draft of a sound resolution, which we shall vote on tomorrow.
We all – or many of us at least – had high expectations prior to Johannesburg, but the outcome fell far short of these. To a certain extent, I believe that the difficulties have to do with the fact that the work on sustainable development in a way runs counter to our traditional method of working. In this context, we are required to work horizontally, that is to say to integrate the objective of economic growth with those of social development and of the effective protection and responsible management of the physical environment.
This integration is difficult for many reasons. To begin with, we do not have an education system that facilitates an understanding of these horizontal connections. On the contrary, most of us have a segmented education. In the same way, the research world is partitioned. Everyone talks about cooperation across the discipline barriers, but the vast majority of researchers are specialists in narrow areas. Few are able to survey the whole scene and few have the knack of seeing systems as an organic whole. Our method of organising ourselves in various areas of society is also vertical or divided into sectors. We can take this Parliament as an example. We should have a committee on sustainable development, but instead we are divided into sectors.
There is also a problem with the whole of the economic model. It is very short-sighted and does not enable us to incorporate either the long-term or qualitative aspects of development. We still measure everything in terms of gross national product, that is to say the total production of goods and services. There is no vision of how such production – or, for that matter, consumption – affects the environment or social development. Do not misunderstand me, I do not for a moment believe that we could solve these problems through negative growth or by consuming less, when the point is that we must devote much more attention to the forms, content and quality of growth and not just to its quantity. Mrs Wallström, I believe this is a great challenge, especially for the Commission.
The European Union’s role in the work in favour of sustainable development is central, especially today when we encounter a lukewarm attitude on the part of the Washington administration. Our responsibility in this area has implications both for our internal policy and for our cooperation with the poor countries. Where our own policy is concerned, we need to adjust the economic regulations so that we provide sufficient positive incentives for the far more efficient management of energy and materials. We also need, step by step, to stop using substances that remain toxic for long periods. Allow me to give a practical example. When it comes to the supply of energy, which is central in the context of the Lisbon Process, we could agree upon an ambitious target for reducing the consumption of energy in our economies or, if we wished to, for increasing energy efficiency by, for example, 2.5% to 3.0% per year. That is entirely possible at a purely technical level, but there is a lack of political will.
Where our relations with the poor countries are concerned, Commissioner Wallström has already pointed to the water and energy initiatives. I can only hope that this issue of the supply of water, with the billion euros earmarked for it, will be resolved shortly. One way of doing this would, in actual fact, be to ensure that the European Development Fund, or EDF, was incorporated into the ordinary budget, something which we in Parliament have always demanded.
When it comes to the energy issue, I am unfortunately rather pessimistic. The proposal submitted is very sound, but there is no extra money set aside. What is really required – and what is not at all happening – is for priority to be given to the supply of energy and to sensible efforts in this area, not only on the part of the Commission but also on that of the recipient countries. I should like to call upon Mrs Wallström to try to release a proper amount of additional money and earmark it for this area.
The resolution we are to decide about tomorrow requires, and reflects the wish for, ongoing progress reports on the part of the Commission. Mrs Wallström has also commented on this, which is excellent. I just hope that there is very substantial reporting of what is being done in the developing countries. In this area, we at present lack any reporting worthy of the name. We lack clear objectives and clear indicators. The discussion we conduct on the aid we provide and on how effective our efforts are in this area is therefore couched in very general terms. I believe the Commission as a whole needs to commit itself to developing both quantitative objectives and indicators whereby we obtain reporting worthy of the name."@en1
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