Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-22-Speech-4-044"
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"en.20080522.7.4-044"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in history, in our history – as the Commissioner said – the total amount of public European development aid has fallen. If we continue along that road, between 2005 and 2010 the European Union will have granted billions of aid less than it had pledged. That is a significant step backwards in the pursuit of the goal of devoting 0.7% to development but also – and that is very important – in the pursuit of the Millennium Goals and, more generally, in the battle we say we want to wage against poverty in the world.
The process we initiated in 2006 to improve the effectiveness of our development aid, and which we are continuing with the report by Mr Van Hecke, whom I thank for the work he has done, cannot be used by Member States as a pretext for not respecting their commitment to increase that aid. In fact the reverse is true, since everybody agrees today that additional resources will be needed on top of the pledged amounts if we are to meet the many commitments we have entered into and those we will, no doubt, still have to take on. Aid effectiveness is, therefore, essential, because more effective aid also means more aid. Everyone must realise that.
In this context, let me point out that, as ever, it is time we made very concrete progress in applying innovatory financing instruments to development aid, something that was mentioned expressly in the Paris Declaration.
We wanted our report also to refer to the role of the diaspora in development cooperation. The European Union is still far too nervous about this, although it would benefit so much from greater and closer cooperation with our fellow citizens from partner countries who are resident in the EU. That would be another means of integrating rather than excluding a great many people and it is a message close to my heart at a time when some Europeans are adopting positions that are astonishing, measures that are shocking.
Lastly, I want to point out that, as the Commissioner has often said, aid will never be really effective until there is real coherence between the various EU policies and until aid is no longer guided by policies that have nothing to do with development. Current events show that we do not yet have that coherence everywhere. This situation will continue so long as the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, which is the relevant authority, continues to apply an extremely broad definition of development cooperation. That is another condition for improving our aid effectiveness.
Two years ago I presented a first report on aid effectiveness in this very Chamber. Where are we now, after all those endlessly repeated words? At any rate, the Commissioner can count on the socialists to carry on with our common struggle to improve aid effectiveness for the sake of the poorest people of the world."@en1
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