Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-15-Speech-4-044"
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".
Mr President, I took the initiative for this report because I am convinced that, at a time when European aid is being reformed, it is essential to give local authorities a central political role in development cooperation.
Lastly, we believe that the involvement of these local authorities and of non-State actors is necessary in order to ensure that European aid fulfils the real needs of disadvantaged populations. We therefore ask for an increase in the budget for the thematic programme, non-State actors and local authorities.
In conclusion, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to emphasise what is, in my opinion, the main issue in this debate. Our cooperation policy does not take sufficient account of the territorial dimension of development, and, as Kofi Annan said at the Millennium summit, while the Millennium Development Goals are global, it is at a local level that we can provide solutions. The answers are local and specific, according to the territory. If we do not take that into consideration, our aid is liable to remain concentrated in the hands of a central government and not to be distributed in the country as a whole.
The former President of Benin, Mr Soglo, recently said to me that, at the time of his Presidency, he thought that aid was distributed fairly in the country, but that, now that he is mayor elect of Cotonou, he realised that this was not the case.
I am pleased that the new development instrument recognises the need to involve local governments in the political dialogue. It remains now for this commitment to be reflected on the ground and for local governments to be given the means to fulfil their new responsibilities.
This is an important year: in 2007, 50% of the world’s population live in towns, and that figure is obviously going to increase very quickly. Local authorities are experts in all fields of local development, and the United Nations has already recognised their central role in the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals. In Europe, however, our consultation stops at civil society organisations. I think that that is unsatisfactory. While the involvement of civil society is necessary, especially that of NGOs who work most closely with local communities on the ground, local authorities have a specific added value.
First of all, they are in most cases legitimately elected over the whole territory. This democratic legitimacy is an advantage in enabling us to improve local democracy and good governance on the ground. Secondly, they have expertise in the management of public services, such as water, health care, education, town planning, waste management, the environment, etc. Finally, they have a territorial approach. They know the local development problems specific to each region and each community.
Their active involvement in European development policy would allow aid to be better distributed over the whole of the territory and better targeted according to the specific needs of each area, whether it be rural, urban, maritime, mountain, desert or any other kind of area.
In view of these observations, my report sets two major challenges for the future of European cooperation. I have not worked out my strategy on my own. For more than four months I consulted the largest international and European local authority organisations in order to obtain their analysis. My report is, in fact, the result of these analyses.
The first challenge: we believe that local authorities must become full political partners of the European Union alongside central governments and civil society organisations. By partnership, I mean the development of a structured political dialogue between the European Commission and local authority organisations.
This dialogue must be active, as much here, in Brussels, as on the ground in developing countries. In Brussels, we want the Commission to put in place a platform for dialogue modelled on CONCORD, the European NGO Confederation for Coordination of Relief and Development. In developing countries, in accordance with the new development instrument and the revised Cotonou Agreement, it is a matter of involving local governments at each stage of the development strategy right from the stage at which strategy documents are drafted for each country.
The second challenge: this report makes several financial proposals to the European Commission. Firstly, we believe that decentralisation must be a priority for the European Union and, consequently, that it has to become a focus for European Union financial aid. In many countries decentralisation is constantly increasing. Local authorities have more and more powers, without having the financial capacity to carry out this new role.
Secondly, we propose that part of the aid budget should go directly to these local authorities. Indeed, our recent debate showed the extent to which aid can pose a problem in these countries, where there is a higher risk of corruption. Decentralising budgetary aid would make it possible, on the one hand, to distribute it more effectively over the whole territory and, on the other hand, not to concentrate it all in the same hands, thereby ensuring better management of European funds."@en1
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