Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-13-Speech-4-012"
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"en.20080313.2.4-012"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to begin by congratulating the rapporteur, Mrs Budreikaitė, for this excellent report detailing the challenge that development policy poses for the new Member States.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is no longer an ‘old Europe’ or a ‘new Europe’. There is no first class and no second class, no old Member States and no new Member States. There is just one Europe – a supportive, open and politically aware Europe – with values that are not only European but also universal. The evolution of development policy over the years since the latest enlargement is proof in itself that the European Union can grow while at the same time becoming more meaningful. In essence this is a remarkable history lesson, relevant both to the future of development policy and to the future of European integration.
I was reminded by your report of all the discussion and concern expressed in the run-up to enlargement, both among the public generally and in the political world; I recalled the suspicions and fears voiced in various quarters that enlargement would dilute our solidarity with the developing world, pushing Africa down the European Union’s order of priorities. In the event the fears were groundless. The predictions and anxieties were shown to have been unjustified. European development policy has never been as ambitious in its aims or as cohesive in its methods as it is today, and Africa has never ranked higher on the Union’s foreign policy agenda. Your report confirms that this has been achieved not in spite of engagement but by virtue of it, and by virtue of the new Member States’ willingness to shoulder the full weight of their responsibilities.
Let us look first at the question of financing. Of course the new Member States still have some way to go to meet the targets for 2010; of course it is essential that more countries should produce multiannual plans for stepping up their aid – only four of the 12 countries concerned have so far carried out that exercise – but we simply cannot overlook the collective effort that these 12 Member States have made, for it is quite remarkable. Since joining the Union, these countries have doubled and in some cases tripled the level of aid they provide. In 2007, aid from these 12 states totalled almost EUR 800 million. Moreover, these countries have undertaken to channel 0.33% of their GDP into development aid from the public purse by 2015.
The next thing to consider is the effectiveness of the aid. Last year the European Union adopted a code of conduct setting out a number of principles for a better division of labour within the Union. I am pleased to report that the new Member States can hold their heads high with regard to implementation of these principles. All the states concerned apply the principle of concentrating their aid in a limited number of countries – an approach long recognised in best practice as making for greater efficiency.
Several of the new Member States also deliver their aid in partnership with other Member States under cofinancing arrangements, thus reducing their own and their partner states’ administrative costs. I am thinking here, for example, of support provided jointly by Slovakia and Austria for infrastructure in Kenya and of aid in the water sector delivered by the Czech Republic in partnership with Luxembourg. These are telling examples and they are not isolated.
Another illustration of efficiency is the fact that the majority of the new Member States support developing countries on the basis of adding value in specific sectors – an approach informed by their own experience of political and economic transition. I could point, for example, to the aid that is directed at good governance, at capacity-building in public administration and at economic reform.
As I see it, these types of action, which are approved in the Code of Conduct on Complementarity and the Division of Labour in Development Policy, are absolutely vital. In April I am to present the first assessment of how the code is being implemented, a year after its adoption, with analyses and proposals for increasing aid and making it more consistent. I intend to use the assessment as a basis for serious discussions with all the Member States about how to proceed from here. Just a few months away from the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, in Accra, the developing world is counting on Europe to point the way ahead, and rightly so because – let me remind you again – Europe is by far the world’s major source of development aid, so it is capable of leading by example and it has a duty to do so.
Your report highlights another fundamentally important point, namely the need for awareness-raising in the new Member States. It is true that most of these countries do not have a long tradition of development aid, particularly to Africa. It is therefore part of our responsibility to keep working on public opinion, getting the message across that this is not just a matter of charity, it is also a matter of mutual interest – and I am thinking here of issues like peace and security, migration, climate change and food security.
In mid-February, with all these things in mind, the European Commission launched the third capacity-building programme for the new Member States. Under the programme, the Commission will supply the expertise needed to develop communication strategies that will enable administrative authorities to tell the public more effectively about what they are doing and to raise levels of awareness, particularly in the media and among students, about what is at stake in development policy."@en1
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