Mr President, the budget debate is always a key moment to express one’s political will. For the European Union, it represents the opportunity to reassert its firm moral duty to extend a helping hand to the developing world; the opportunity to show how much we wish to combat poverty, injustice, discrimination of all kinds, the lack of democracy, violation of human rights and attacks on freedom. In short, it is the opportunity to show our determination to pursue our development policy, even if we must review it here and there in order to make it more efficient and more transparent. From this point of view, the draft budget for the year 2000 gives rise to serious concern. In saying that, I am of course referring to Category 4, which Mr Bourlanges has just discussed at length. In addition to the fact that first the Commission and then the Council have proposed very significant reductions in all the budget lines concerned, we now have to respond to a great number of tragic situations throughout the world. We have to respond to the tragic situation of the Kosovar people and commit considerable resources to the reconstruction of the country. But we must do this by freeing up new appropriations and not by amputating all the Category 4 lines by approximately 10%. We cannot make the very poorest people pay for the operations of the European Union. We cannot set the poor of one country against the poor of another country or distinguish between good victims and bad victims, and I am very sorry that the Council to some extent presented the problem in these terms, by setting different cases of poverty against each other. We need sufficient appropriations to finance reconstruction in Kosovo, of course, but also for East Timor. And, believe me, ECHO appropriations will not be enough to fund everything, no more than transferring appropriations from one line to the next according to current priorities. We also have to finance the fisheries agreement with Morocco, which is a priority for the European Parliament. We must therefore invite the Council to review the Financial Perspective for our external policies in Category 4. I believe that Parliament is fairly unanimous on this point. I must also thank, on behalf of the Committee on Development and Cooperation, both the general rapporteur for the budget, Mr Bourlanges, and the Committee on Budgets, as well as its chairman, Mr Wynn, for the stance they have taken on this matter. Nonetheless, on behalf of the Committee on Development and Cooperation, we have decided to submit three amendments. The first involves the question of gender. Throughout Africa, women are taking action; they are the driving force, the hope of Africa for the next millennium, and we must support this movement. The second amendment concerns the lines of health, reproduction, and the fight against AIDS, which we propose to merge. This merging must not, however, be grounds for a reduction in appropriations. Twenty-five million people in Africa are going to die of AIDS, twenty-five million potential patients, nine tenths of whom, due to lack of scanning and lack of sex education, are unaware of the danger lurking in their body. AIDS will be the next tragedy in Africa. The third amendment which we wish to submit concerns line B7-6000 on the Community contribution to the operations of NGOs. The draft budget envisages a drastic reduction in the appropriations allocated to this line. Mr Bourlanges proposed instead to increase them, and I thank him for this. What we propose is to amend the wording. This is an amendment which does not have financial implications but which is going to enable the Liaison Committee ... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PSE