Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-06-Speech-4-035"
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"en.20060406.5.4-035"2
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".
Mr President, I very much welcome Mr van den Berg’s report on aid effectiveness and corruption in developing countries and I would like to congratulate him on it.
Corruption is the single biggest obstacle to the delivery of aid to the poor. We have to ask why the EU continues to channel aid to corrupt regimes. How can we stand by and watch starvation in many African countries, while the leaders are laden with the trappings of exceptional wealth? The EU must take a firm stance against governments that are exercising blatantly corrupt methods of governance.
There is a need for more transparency. The EU is the world’s largest donor of aid. The EU has a responsibility to monitor and approve the implementation of this aid. More aid must be channelled directly into specific projects rather than a handover to recipient national coffers, so it is absolutely clear where the money is being spent. The establishment of civil society watchdogs in developing countries must be seriously looked at and I call on the Commission to give the appropriate percentage of budget aid for such watchdogs.
Education and training needs to be improved and the number of women in higher level education needs to be increased in order to afford them the opportunity to become more involved in politics. Anyone who has visited Africa knows the important role that women play. They could play a far more important role if they were allowed to, so this needs to be looked at and encouraged.
A major question facing development countries is the illicit acquisition of public funds by government officials who store them in offshore accounts. I call on the financial institutions that hold these stolen funds to freeze them or confiscate them. They know where this money is coming from. If I lodge EUR 10 000 in my bank account in Ireland, the bank manager is obliged to ask me where the money came from. In these countries they put millions in and nobody asks them anything.
I call for corrupt regimes or individuals to be blacklisted, to prevent them from borrowing large sums of money from wealthy countries. Only when they have made a noteworthy move towards democracy should they be removed from the list.
We also have to examine ourselves. Take the case of Kenya and the Anglo Leasing scandal. Mr John Githongo, who is the anti-corruption tsar, had to leave the country because of what he found and he has asked that British citizens be examined concerning this scandal.
People in Europe are involved in scams and bogus companies that are lending and giving money to Africa and they have to be stopped. A number of years ago there was a campaign in all European countries. In Ireland we brought in legislation that meant that people involved in sexual offences in Third World countries could be charged in their home country. The same kind of legislation could be introduced in Europe with regard to corruption so that anybody in Europe involved in corruption or bribing officials in Africa or any other Third World country could and should be charged under legislation in their home country.
That is the sort of thing we have to look at if we are going to get rid of corruption. We cannot just blame African people. We have got to look at ourselves and how we are involved in schemes of this sort."@en1
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