Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-112"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20031105.8.3-112"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, the revision of this regulation has given us plenty to think about. First of all, we had the proposed cooperation agreement which, it has to be said, looked more like a free-trade agreement than a development programme. That did not surprise us unduly, because it formed part of the current European policy which is leading to a change in the thinking behind the Community’s development policy. Within that regulation, however, we succeeded in reinserting sustainable development, accompanied by social and environmental objectives. In particular, 10% of the budget for this programme is to be allocated to the conservation and sustainable management of natural resources, and 35% to social and health infrastructures. Human rights, and especially women’s rights, the rights of minorities and of indigenous peoples and the removal of inequalities are also the guiding principles of European cooperation policy in these regions. Finally, we have ensured that civil society will participate in the definition of the multi-annual development plans. Reducing poverty will therefore have to be the first goal of the national programmes which will be negotiated between each country and the Commission. Since Parliament will not be consulted, it was necessary to insert some guidelines at an early stage, and that is what we did in the Committee on Development and Cooperation. I beg you, ladies and gentlemen, not to call into question, for institutional reasons, a text which has finally been given a political content. Why ask for two regulations, one for Asia and the other for Latin America, rather than a single regulation divided into several chapters? We would do better to campaign for an overall increase in aid rather than wanting to know which continent will get most. As far as I am concerned, it is irrelevant whether the money is allocated to Asia or to Latin America, provided that it goes to the poorest people. It is for that reason that we want to have parliamentary control. Unfortunately we have used up a great deal of energy and wasted a great deal of time on a dispute which seems to me to be trivial, given the size of the challenges we have to meet in Asia and in Latin America. I believe that the essential thing is to fight for the content of these regulations, the content of these chapters, the content that we are giving them today, because that is what the people of both Asia and Latin America expect of us today."@en1

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph