Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-18-Speech-2-624-000"
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"en.20110118.22.2-624-000"2
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"Madam President, first, I would like to thank Members of this House for their solidarity and support. I will start with the political dimension. The situation is certainly not easy in Haiti, but the High Representative is following it very closely and giving all the necessary diplomatic support to ensure that there is stability. The second round of presidential elections will help rebuild credibility if there is no violence around it, so we are also making all the necessary diplomatic efforts; but diplomatic efforts sometimes give immediate results and sometimes need time to produce results.
Some of you mentioned Baby Doc’s visit. We can say that whilst anybody can move freely, this was definitely not the best sign of the whole political process. But we should not be somehow misled by this. I think there is a healthy political core in Haiti and we should believe in it. Our hope is that the people who are elected in the legislative elections and the president will have the necessary capacities to lead the reconstruction of the country.
The second point I would like to emphasise is that development cooperation is about hard choices. One choice is do something with high visibility that does not entail a structural change. It would be no problem to finance thousands of doctors from the EU or to build a new university in the name of the EU; it would be visible and everybody would say fine. But what about the insecurity in the streets? We finance security in quite difficult conditions through the government. So, if security is provided partially, it is financed by the European Union. Is it visible? Not very much so, because there is no EU label, but I believe it is definite that we have provided for the stability of the country.
Another point is where to invest money. Again, rebuilding the houses would be the easiest political choice, but what help is that if the country is not reconnected, if there is no infrastructure? And infrastructure requires massive investment. Roughly speaking, one kilometre of road costs USD 1 million and in Haiti even more, because there must be maintenance, and also we need to help the local communities through which the road passes. So the costs are very substantial. Haiti will not have such funds to invest. Strangely enough, in Haiti, we are the only ones involved in the road infrastructure. Normally, many other countries participate in road infrastructure, but in Haiti, we are alone in giving grants for this. It is a difficult choice, but I believe it will help the country to have structural change.
A last point which was not raised very much today is the speed of commitment and disbursement of funds. The funds should not be misused and it takes time for budget support. It is not just that the government gives us an account and we just transfer the money. No. We check the account, we know where the disbursements go, so it is quite a procedure. You cannot just immediately send EUR 1.2 billion to an account and expect that everything will be sorted out. We also have a responsibility to our taxpayers. The same considerations apply with the roads: we need to launch a tender, we need to be transparent about this and that takes a bit of time. But I believe this time is rightly taken, because it needs only one case of a misuse of funds for the support for Haiti’s reconstruction to be damaged in the eyes of European citizens. I can assure you that we will take all the necessary steps in this regard, too.
Again, I thank you for your support. It was a very helpful and encouraging debate and I believe that we will try to deliver on the issues that you have mentioned today."@en1
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