Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-22-Speech-4-028"
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank the rapporteur, Mr Van Hecke, and the Committee on Development for this excellent report. I am also delighted to find that we have exactly the same approach and are fighting to achieve the same results.
My fourth point concerns situations of fragility. An example is that in 2006, 65% of the aid granted to Ivory Coast, Liberia and the Central African Republic came from only three bilateral donors. There again we have already proposed pilot countries involving the largest number of Member States. In procedural terms, I have called for the Commission to be as flexible as it can under current rules so as to improve our ability to react. Having said that, we must not forget that the aid effectiveness issue is not the exclusive preserve of the donors; on the contrary, it must also be the cornerstone of the partner countries’ action and be central to our dialogue with them. Only the partner countries are in a position to force us to provide more effective aid by actively defining not only their development objectives but also the means of achieving them. That is the only way our dialogue can progress on a basis of partnership founded on equal rights and obligations.
I want to make a last point before concluding. Parliament is asking the Commission to give the delegations adequate room for action. You are quite right! We are trying to do so by means of our decentralisation process. We ask a lot of our delegations. As you know, resources are limited and, in the end, the capacity to use our delegations also depends on the budgetary authority.
Once again, I would ask you to help us convince our Member States – something Mr Van Hecke also brought up – that they have a moral duty, an imperative obligation, to respect the commitments they made in 2005 regarding the amount of aid they allocate. You know that 2007 is a year to be forgotten as quickly as possible because certain countries did not honour their commitments, which eclipsed the good behaviour of others who, for their part, showed they were able to do so.
That is why we will propose, firstly, that they reiterate their 2005 commitment and, secondly, present an agenda, a road map, a phased plan showing how they will achieve the objectives to which they subscribed. As I said at the beginning, we have not won the day yet, because according to my information preliminary meetings indicate that some Member States might even be prepared to refuse to reiterate their 2005 undertakings, which is of course unacceptable, while others would clearly not be prepared to plan in phases either. I therefore need your strength of conviction and, if I may call it that, your capacity for cheek, to make everyone face up to their responsibilities.
I believe the next six months will be vitally important in terms of testing the European Union’s real resolve to make concrete progress on the three main pillars of development policy: firstly, achieving the Millennium Goals; secondly, increasing aid volumes; thirdly, improving aid effectiveness. The Accra meeting in September will test the credibility of the entire process and all the players involved. Either the process will really take off, or it will be bogged down forever.
Today’s debate is, therefore, very important in that it can pass on a strong message to the General Affairs and External Relations Council next week. That Council will discuss the Commission’s proposals in relation to the objectives. I hope that in its turn that Council will send out a message that is just as ambitious as the one contained in Mr Van Hecke’s report. By acting together, we Europeans made a difference in Paris in 2005. We must be equally ambitious today and ensure that in Accra we move on from rhetoric to action on all our commitments.
I have heard too many voices in our Member States that want to turn Accra and this debate into a technical debate about feasibility, effectiveness, and so forth. It is not a technical debate. Accra is not a technical meeting. It is a political meeting, at which we will find out whether the Member States have the political will to meet their commitments.
The battle is far from won. The Commission cannot act alone. That is why I am calling on you to mobilise all your resources and contacts to ensure that this summit proves a real success. The burden of proof now lies in the camp of the Member States and of non-European backers. An alliance between Parliament and the Commission is, therefore, vital.
I will not repeat what is written in the report. I agree almost 100% with it. We need concrete progress in important areas, of which I will cite just a few. The first is aid predictability. I am most grateful for Parliament’s support for MDG contracting. That is one of the proposals I will be putting on the table in Accra. Of course the partner countries will have to play their part in this contract and, obviously, we will have to set up monitoring mechanisms.
Secondly, there is the question of making greater use of partner countries’ procedures. That is why I have said that in countries where that is possible budgetary aid should be the main instrument for channelling aid. It is interesting to note – and I believe it is important for you to remember the figures I am going to quote – that to date Tanzania has had to produce some 2 400 reports for the various donors and, listen carefully, more than 8 000 audit reports for the multilateral development banks. You must admit that is flabbergasting and poses a real problem.
The report rightly emphasises the need for increased transparency and responsibility in development aid, although obviously that is impossible with such a jungle of reports. It can be done only if we strengthen parliamentary oversight in relation to development financing and its inclusion in the national budget, as the rapporteur said. We must encourage ‘democratic ownership’ and we will support partner countries in their endeavours to strengthen that ownership and oversight. Obviously, parliaments and civil society play a key role here.
My third point concerns the division of labour. The code of conduct must become reality. Another example: in Mali, 26 donors are involved in rural development, while in Burkina, five donors are involved in half of all the country’s sectors and half of all donors are involved in one third of all the sectors. So that is where the margins for improvement lie in the various countries, in terms of effectiveness, and I would really like to have Parliament’s support in trying to convince the Member States of the need for a better division of labour. That would bring a quite colossal improvement in aid effectiveness."@en1
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