Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-17-Speech-3-216"
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"en.20060517.20.3-216"2
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".
Mr President, before going into the substance I would like to welcome the presence of the Commission and the Council. I particularly appreciate the efforts of successive presidencies to find a solution to the outstanding problems linked to the original Commission proposal on the DCECI.
When debating this instrument, our overriding concern must be the interests of the developing countries, and in particular the poorest sections of their populations. The remit of the Committee on Development is to represent their interests at European Union level and to ensure that they are kept on the EU’s political agenda. That is why we argue in favour of a specific instrument for the needs of the developing countries, namely poverty alleviation with true economic cooperation and sustainable development, and not just a default instrument for all countries not covered by any other instrument. I believe that this view is now widely accepted and I hope that the Commission now accepts it also.
This Parliament obviously shares the Commission’s desire for greater efficiency, simplification and flexibility in the legislative domain, but cannot allow this to happen at the expense of its own competences and of democracy itself. Parliament essentially exercises its competences in the policy domain at three levels: determination of political priorities – which means codecision at policy-setting level, monitoring implementation, and budgetary powers.
Those three levels are complementary and Parliament, being the only institution directly elected by the European citizens, should strive to have a greater say in all three of them. We should not, however, accept an increase in parliamentary powers at one level at the expense of our existing powers at another level. Codecision is not negotiable. Parliament fought for many years to get it and it is now enshrined in the Treaty.
I am pleased to hear the Commissioner’s assurances on codecision here today. May I say to the Presidency that the difference with the DCECI is that it seeks to replace 16 codecided regulations with one regulation. I am absolutely amazed that the Commission and Council can so easily agree on taking away the role of Parliament. We should also not permit the human rights instrument, which Parliament has consistently been calling for, to be used to make us relinquish our policy-setting powers. Human rights are too important to be used as a bargaining chip in interinstitutional negotiations.
The ball is now in the Commission’s court. My proposal to make the Development Cooperation Instrument the single administrative and procedural regulation for development cooperation not only gives the Commission the administrative simplification and flexibility it seeks, but also ensures that policy implementation is kept apart from the unpredictability of political life. Priorities may change rapidly, according to our political agendas and those of our partners, but a procedural regulation will ensure that implementation can go on unhindered.
As rapporteur on the DCECI, I am fully determined to continue the intensive work that has gone into it and to ensure that it is in place as a procedural regulation well before the end of the year. Now that the Commission has recognised that the policy content for development cooperation must be established by codecision, it is time for it to submit formal legislative proposals on geographical and thematic priorities, so that Parliament and Council can finally start the process of legislating. Both the geographical and the thematic content are close to the heart of the European Parliament and require a thorough debate.
We are talking about priorities for our cooperation with Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Far East and South Africa; our priorities in the fields of human and social development; sustainable management of natural resources such as water and energy; the environment and the role of non-State actors. These require a full and proper debate in Parliament. Since we know that the debate on such vast and sensitive issues will be difficult and the time is now running out, I want to inform the Council and the Commission that the Committee on Development is setting up a working group to discuss the policy content. This will speed up negotiations within Parliament and with the other institutions once we have received formal proposals.
As I said at the beginning, we are talking about cooperation with hundreds of millions of poor people in the world. They need our continued support. For that, we need a legal base. It is up to the Commission to propose it in time. I welcome the tone and content of the Commissioner’s contribution here today, but there is a lot of work to be done and I hope we will soon get down to doing it."@en1
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