Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-15-Speech-3-279"
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"en.20041215.10.3-279"2
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".
Mr President, I thank the Commissioner for her opening remarks. I am very pleased to see in the Chamber Mrs Morgantini, the chairman of the Committee on Development, Mrs Flautre, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Rights, the shadow rapporteur and my co-rapporteur on the Committee on Development, Mr Fernández Martín.
I recently put together a document detailing the European Parliament's pro-democracy activities, both within the EU and externally. As Members, we participate in a myriad of interparliamentary delegations, consultation committees and informal groups. Valuable work is being done, but the work is fragmented. The same can be said about the European initiative. To my mind, our involvement should be coordinated in a democracy centre, based in this House, mandated to act as a research unit, an oversight body on all the EU's pro-democracy activities. To take an example, the website of the State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor boasts that the United States has overseen the transition of 87 countries to democratic states. Is this a statistic that the EU wishes to leave in the hands of the United States alone? Last weekend's G8 Conference in Rabat – and I am delighted that the Commissioner was present – co-financed by the European Union, further developed plans for the Forum for the Future, first introduced at the Sea Island Summit in June 2004, to promote democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the financial contribution of the European Union to such an important event, it is the Americans rather than the European Union who are leading this activity. We recognise that the United States programme essentially echoes the principles of the Barcelona process and now the European Neighbourhood Policy.
In 2005, the United Kingdom will take over the presidency of both the G8 and the European Union. I sincerely hope that there will be a greater focus on the 250 million Arabs who want democracy, as illustrated by the 2002 United Nations Development Report, as well as the manifestly failing countries to our east.
Lastly, while I do not propose that the European Parliament should reject the regulation or the associated budget lines for any longer than strictly necessary, I find the response from the Commission – the letter from the Commissioner relating to the new arrangements on this programme, which does not reference working level contacts – and the Council – which is still using a working party consisting of development ministers – to the concerns I and others expressed about the democracy initiative to be lacking in substance and completely unfitted to the needs of our time and the needs of millions of unfree people on our doorstep.
There were two regulations, one of which has already been adopted by this House. The one we are dealing with now is that covering third countries.
Twelve years ago I was rapporteur and, as Mr Patten has described me, 'father' of the European initiative for democracy and human rights, which proved to be instrumental in helping the transitional ex-Soviet bloc countries. It was considered by many as the European Union's flagship scheme for democracy promotion. It gave meaning to the preamble to the Maastricht Treaty concerning the EU's foreign policy priorities.
In its initial phase it was administered by a small foundation based in Brussels, with both the European Parliament and the Commission playing an active role in the allocation and supervision of projects. At its height in 1997, the initiative was financing and administering around 1 200 projects. In 1999 I visited some of them in Belgrade, including key pro-democracy media, such as Radio B92. The same year the initiative was taken in-house by the Commission.
I have been concerned for a long time that the initiative has become bureaucratic and safe and that the European Parliament, as the only democratically elected institution, should once again play a greater role.
Although the initiative currently has a budget of some EUR 137 million, it lacks visibility and effectiveness. I am all the more convinced of this following meetings on the ground and discussions with more than 30 organisations. Most recently, I spoke to the Association of Belarusian Journalists – currently here to receive the Sakharov Prize – as well as the Eurasia Director of a US pro-democracy agency. They were not even aware of the existence of the European democracy initiative.
This is a very valuable programme and one that needs to be made more effective. An important point to make is that unlike routine EU assistance, the European initiative does not require the host government's consent. In a country such as Belarus, not to speak of Tunisia or Iran, in which operating through government channels is difficult and often impossible, this cannot be underestimated.
In a paper on the EU security strategy in 2003, Javier Solana outlined the importance and sensitivity of Europe's new neighbourhood. The resulting policy invites our neighbours to the east and south to share in the peace, stability and prosperity that we enjoy in the European Union. It aims to create a 'ring of friends' around the borders of the new enlarged European Union. Sadly, the only visibility of the EU's democracy activities in the new neighbourhood seems to be short observation missions by Members of the European Parliament, such as those undertaken recently in Ukraine. I believe that all significant elections in the new neighbourhood should be the subject of full EU observation missions.
There is a feeling in Brussels that democracy cannot be exported and that change must come from within. However, the United States National Endowment for Democracy has shown since 1982 that the two can be combined. It operates as an independent expert agency, using NGOs on the ground, and is much respected for its programmes and methodology. As well as the United States activities, the Westminster Foundation, for example, or the German
and other NGOs have higher visibility and much less bureaucracy than the European initiative."@en1
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"Stiftungen"1
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