Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-029"
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"en.20080422.4.2-029"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, fellow Members, I would like to thank Dan Jørgensen and Alexander Stubb, as they matched the intentions of the Committee on Development one to one. We are very thankful for this because we in the Committee on Development worked very hard on this question.
The European Union – the budgets of the European Union itself, combined with the budgets of the Member States – is by far the largest donor of development aid in the world. Nevertheless, with what is happening currently, we find that it is still far too little, and that we really ought to do more. We cannot wait until food and energy shortages in the world blow up in our face and then be surprised that people take to the streets. The money that we donate – and, as I said, we are already the world’s largest donor – needs to be targeted more precisely so that we know that the money actually reaches those who need it and that it is not dissipated and does not disappear. Therefore, we have devoted a great deal of energy to checking whether the funds that we deploy are in fact used for the intended purpose. A key emphasis for Parliament and the Committee is that 20% of the funds have to be used for basic health care and basic and further education, so as to establish a foundation for the future. Thus we have made some progress, but the Commission is still a long way from where we would like it to be. You need to do more work on it; we will keep at you.
We called on you to reduce backlogs of payments from the past and indeed, arrears from before 2001 have been reduced by 39% for Europe Aid and by 49% for the European Development Fund. These are good figures, but of course they can only ever be an interim stage. In relation to development policy, we have repeatedly pointed out that it makes no sense at all to maintain two complete systems running in parallel – one for the European Development Fund and one for development aid. It must be integrated in the budget! This is a demand that we are making now and that we will make in future negotiations on financial forecasts.
My last point concerns budget assistance. Increasingly, the Commission is granting countries general budget assistance. It is possible to do this, but be careful that you do not experience what we experienced with the current Member States in relation to the Structural Funds – that we transfer responsibility because the states are supposed to take responsibility, and then find out that the systems are not functioning and that ‘nobody’ was responsible for this. Hence my advice: please be certain about what you are doing from the very start.
We will be with you all the way, critical but also positive. Overall, sincere congratulations to the rapporteurs and thank you very much for the cooperation."@en1
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