Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-24-Speech-4-101-000"
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"en.20120524.7.4-101-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the EU’s macro-financial assistance was launched in 1990 to grant financial assistance to third countries experiencing short-term balance of payments difficulties. A total of 55 decisions benefiting 23 countries have so far been approved, amounting to EUR 7.2 billion in the form of grants, loans, or a combination of both.
Lastly, I would like to emphasise that the Commission suggested that this would be a temporary regulation valid only for this financial framework, which means that it will last less than two years. I proposed that the regulation should be open-ended, thereby guaranteeing legal certainty and avoiding duplication of effort.
In our justifications accompanying the draft regulation, the Commission and I, as rapporteur, are pursuing two main objectives: making macro-financial assistance more effective and the need to devise clear rules and conditions for agreeing to provide it. I am not going, of course, to dwell on every detail, but I would also like to share my fundamental ideas which, I firmly believe, vindicate the basic prerogatives of the European Parliament.
First of all, the Commission proposed that decisions to grant macro-financial assistance on a case-by-case basis should be adopted using implementing acts in order to speed up the process of granting such assistance and make it more efficient. However, I disagree with this approach, particularly given that, at the moment, every case for granting macro-financial assistance is handled using the codecision procedure. This is why I am also proposing the use of delegated acts because they combine greater speed and efficiency with the need for democratic scrutiny to be carried out by the European Parliament.
Secondly, I think that macro-financial assistance must provide European added value and should only be used when the EU has something to offer rather than act as a top-up from the International Monetary Fund. In addition, this assistance is often too small to guarantee implementation of the policy adopted under the Memorandum of Understanding. This is the reason why the report proposes that, in most cases, the European Union’s contribution should not fall below a certain minimum percentage to guarantee large countries’ access to the assistance and also the European Union’s involvement to ensure such added value.
The practice of linking macro-financial assistance to an International Monetary Fund scheme should continue as the norm, but there must be flexibility for the European Union to work with other European and multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank or the European Investment Bank.
The Commission’s proposal is slightly vague on how the ratio of grants to loans is determined, stating that it will consider the level of economic development of the beneficiary country, but without explaining how this analysis will be used.
Fourthly, and very importantly, macro-financial assistance is also an EU foreign policy tool. Close involvement of the European External Action Service for the purpose of coordination and the consistency of this policy should be ensured throughout the whole macro-financial assistance operation, thereby increasing the coherence between macro-financial assistance and the objectives stipulated in the EU’s foreign policy for promoting democracy and human rights.
This is why it would be useful to introduce a special report from this service prior to offering any macro-financial assistance to verify whether each partner country respects human rights and other political conditions.
I firmly believe that policy measures should be included in the Memorandum of Understanding in the area of democratic principles and human rights. Furthermore, I think that deterioration in democratic conditions provides a reason for the suspension, reduction or cancellation of the disbursement of assistance."@en1
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