Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-12-Speech-2-028"
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"en.20061212.8.2-028"2
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"Mr President, this debate is important because we are going to approve the instrument that will serve as a legal basis for using the resources that the European Union allocates to development cooperation and humanitarian action.
My concern is that, having consolidated Parliament’s competences, we are now going to fail to meet the responsibilities conferred on us by the instrument and which are going to require a lot of work on the part of the House, its Committee on Development, its staff, which must be increased, incidentally, if we want to be in a position to take on the work, and, above all, on the part of the parliamentary groups, whose obligations are going to be increased since they will have to contribute to the strategy documents for each country targeted by European Union development cooperation, and in monitoring the programmes that are approved.
We must not end up in the ridiculous position of not being able to meet the obligation that we have worked so hard to obtain from the Community’s institutional partners.
While the Financial Perspective for 2007-2013 reduces the Union's capacity to act in almost all fields, paradoxically, the money available to us for our solidarity with the developing world is not being reduced, but rather it is increasing slightly.
This debate provides a satisfactory end to a process that has lasted an exceptionally long time, having had to overcome serious difficulties. However, the instrument that we will approve has the merit of reaching the House as the result of a consensus between Parliament, the Commission and the Council.
The search for that consensus was the reason for the process taking so long. It was a complicated challenge, since the task was to condense, into one single legal instrument, the more than fifteen previously in force over which the bases for our development cooperation actions were spread.
It was a question of rationalising that task, and Parliament agreed with that. Nevertheless, it had to reject the Commission’s initial proposals when, supposedly for the sake of greater efficiency, it came to restricting the House’s role, that is to say, to restricting democracy. That was something that Parliament could not accept and our Committee on Development acted with a degree of responsibility that we should be proud of.
Despite what some people claimed, it was not a question of promoting the role of our committee. It was a question of maintaining and increasing the role of Parliament, that is to say, the democratic responsibility of our House, in a field that is important from political and budgetary points of view.
Many of us have had to confront totalitarian powers, which justified their authoritarianism by stating that democracy complicated procedures and made management less efficient. We all know what a fallacy that is, however, and that there can be no efficiency without democratic rules, both when actions are decided upon and when the executive’s actions are subject to control.
Thanks to our firmness with regard to the work of the rapporteur, Mr Mitchell, and thanks to all of the groups rallying round, our efforts ended in success. We must thank the British, Austrian and Finnish Presidencies for the understanding they have shown towards our points of view, and also the Commission, which has sought ways to take account of Parliament's demands.
The text of the instrument is consistent with the European consensus on development and with the various strategies that we have been approving, particularly the European strategy for the development of Africa. It is also consistent with the text of the Constitution, which makes solidarity with the countries of the South a constitutional priority for the European Union."@en1
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