Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-06-Speech-4-027"
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"en.20060406.5.4-027"2
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".
Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the rapporteur for his excellent report. The Commission is particularly keen on ensuring that the aid it manages serves the objectives of combating and ultimately eradicating poverty, and in that respect the power management of financial resources is crucial. Hence the decision to make governance in general a horizontal and central theme in the programming of the tenth EDF, because combating corruption can only be successful when embedded in a broader agenda of capacity building.
In summary, we share much of Mr van den Berg’s analysis. We think more attention could be paid to public procurement issues, and we think some of the detailed measures proposed need to be reviewed and discussed further.
In this context we share the view of the rapporteur, Mr van den Berg, on the importance and scale of the problem. Corruption is indeed a major obstacle to development. It hits the poorest in developing countries the hardest. It is responsible for political instability and the violation of human rights, and it reduces the level of resources available for development funding.
Secondly, we agree that corruption is a very complex phenomenon which needs to be addressed through a whole range of different measures. International agreements are important, and the report notes that the UN Convention on Corruption still has to be ratified by several of our Member States. We need to work with private-sector organisations, and we need civil society watchdogs.
In our assistance programmes we have various measures to support good governance, such as reforms of the legal system, support for Supreme Audit Institutions, assistance for civil society, and support for national parliaments, which was the subject of a debate at the recent ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. We already support civil society watchdogs, for instance Transparency International chapters in some countries.
Thirdly, on budget support, Mr van den Berg pays particular attention to that, and rightly so, not because it is especially prone to corruption, but because it is part of the solution. Its big advantage is that it directly addresses a major source of corruption in many countries, namely the weak management of public finances.
Our budget support goes only to those countries which are clearly committed to reforming their public finance system and, by strengthening sensitive areas like public procurement, it makes an important contribution to the fight against corruption. Project-type assistance, on the other hand, is heavily based on public procurement but cannot address weaknesses in the system.
You are aware of the special report by the Court of Auditors on public finance management in the framework of budget support in ACP countries, which supports the approach adopted by the Commission. I also want to highlight the importance of the harmonisation agenda, which was the focus of the Paris Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in March this year and emphasises the importance of strengthening beneficiary country systems of financial management and control, which is precisely one of the things that we are doing. One note of caution, however: budget support is not earmarked for a specific sector, but specific sectoral reform measures and targets can establish the conditions for the funds which are, of course, paid into the general budget.
Fourthly, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness also underlines the importance of improving the transparency of public procurement procedures in our partner countries. Those procedures are often a source of corruption.
My last point concerns our colleagues in the field. One of the key objectives of the devolution process is to ensure that aid is more closely supervised in the field and to make the most of the detailed local knowledge of our ‘in-country’ staff. Delegations can check that aid is properly used. Moreover, for some kinds of contract we now require external audits before we make the final payment, and a comprehensive system for programming external audits was introduced in 2003, covering audits to be launched both by headquarters and by delegations."@en1
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