Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-22-Speech-4-054"
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"en.20080522.7.4-054"2
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"Mr President, I would firstly like to congratulate and thank my colleague, Johan Van Hecke, for his remarkable work. His report notes that the approach to development aid needs to be reformed. I can only agree, and stress that this reform should start with a re-think from the roots – namely development policy – upwards. I strongly believe that aid should no longer be limited to help, support or assistance. We should change our mindset and see our contribution to developing countries as investment in the broadest sense of the word. It should be an investment that we undertake on a long-term basis, not just for ensuring the survival of those countries, but also for their real development as functional economies and democracies.
While investing, we also need to touch on core issues that could bring a real end to poverty. A couple of weeks ago, during his visit to Parliament, Professor Geoffrey Sachs underlined how much influence, in positive terms, the use of unexploited land in Africa would have on food prices. Instead of providing food supplies to Africa, we should transfer agricultural know-how so that the continent can feed its own population and, in a positive scenario, even provide food at global level.
I am deeply concerned by another issue underlined in this report: the programming of money flow towards recipient countries. From my experience, projects cannot achieve their goals if resources do not come in time and if they are less than the amount initially planned. That is where the European Union can fail badly. In 2007 the level of EU aid decreased. Many projects were affected and their goals could not be achieved.
Last but not least, development education and raising the awareness of our own citizens on this subject should be considered a priority. We, as Members of this Parliament, have an essential role to play in that respect."@en1
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