Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-12-Speech-3-212"
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"en.20050112.11.3-212"2
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".
Mr President, this debate on debt relief is opportune. Discussions on debt relief for the countries seriously affected by the disaster in the Indian Ocean are going on in Paris. Relief of this sort must be on a substantial scale and be implemented rapidly. I might mention, incidentally, that the Paris Club is meeting today to discuss the possibility of a moratorium on the debts of the countries that want such relief.
Let us acknowledge, though, that the situation of Iraq, which gave rise to this question and this debate, is quite specific and quite exceptional. The debt relief for the Republic of Iraq, and I would call it substantial debt relief, which was decided on by the Paris Club in November, is without doubt indispensable if the country’s economy is to be rebuilt, and also if a sovereign Iraq with democratic and legitimate institutions is to be reborn.
Nevertheless, the question of the relief needed, as I have just said, for Iraq’s debts, also arises – and, let me say, with the same urgency – with reference to the least developed countries. It would be incomprehensible, not to say absurd, for debt relief to be granted only to a country that had fallen victim to a natural disaster or to conflict. Absolute poverty itself gives rise to real disasters on a daily basis, in the shape of malnutrition, chronic illiteracy, high rates of infant mortality, AIDS, and more besides. It stands in the way of development and promotes all sorts of conflicts causing thousands, indeed millions of deaths, which the media often ignore and pass over in silence.
We see, then, that the relief of the poorest countries’ debts is at the heart of the fight against poverty as well as of support for a policy aimed at eradicating it and of the relaunch of a development process in line with the millennium objectives.
A high level of debt and a debt burden no longer in proportion to a country’s economic capacity hamper any prospect of development and lead, paradoxically, not to the hoped-for economic upturn, but to the rampant destitution of the poorest countries’ populations.
Faced with this state of affairs, the European Union has not been inactive, nor will it be so in the future. The Monterrey conference saw it make practical commitments, the potential revision of which will be debated at the April General Affairs and External Relations Council. Its efforts at relieving the debts of less developed countries took practical form in the HIPC (High Indebted Poor Countries) initiative, which was proposed by the World Bank and the IMF in 1996 and reinforced in 1999. This is a coordinated approach aimed at bringing the poorest countries’ debts down to a sustainable level, including not only public, bilateral and multilateral debt, but also trading debt. This initiative has the potential to help forty-two countries, thirty-eight of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. The results achieved to date are positive but, as yet, insufficient. Little impact has been had on trading debt. Around 60% of the HIPC initiative’s funding was provided by the European Union. A number of creditors have not yet done anything about relieving the debt.
The United Kingdom’s forthcoming presidency of both G8 and the EU has made debt relief for the least developed countries a priority objective. We want to work closely with the United Kingdom, thus enabling the European Union to develop a coherent and ambitious approach in this area.
Debt relief must continue to be one of the priority objectives of the EU’s cooperation and development policy. It cannot be addressed in isolation from other policies: trade policy, including the adoption of a new generalised preference system, positive conclusions from the Doha round that are favourable to developing countries, increased development aid concentrating on the eradication of poverty, support for good governance, and the settlement and prevention of conflicts."@en1
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