We are living in a world of unprecedented global wealth. This wealth, however, has never been so poorly distributed. Inequalities on a global scale have reached intolerable, appalling proportions. In 1960, the 20% of the world’s population living in the richest countries had an income 30 times higher than that of the 20% poorest. In 1995, their income was 82 times higher. At the other end of the scale, almost three billion people live on less than USD two per day. More than 800 million are starving. In September 2001, in the ‘Millennium Declaration’, the international community committed itself to halving poverty by 2015. The international community must, from now on, make the move from these good intentions to positive action. Europe must provide the impetus for this action. Next March, in Monterrey, then in Johannesburg in September at the World Summit on sustainable development, the European Union must take the initiative and make concrete proposals and set a precise timetable to honour these commitments. This offensive promoting development and combating poverty should be organised around four key ideas. The first is to increase public aid in considerable proportions until it reaches – at last – the objective of 0.7% of the wealth of the northern countries set more than 30 years ago. A major step was taken in this direction by the last ‘Development’ Council, which put this objective back on the agenda and called upon the Commission to set deadlines together with the Member States. We need, from now on, to establish a more precise and restrictive timetable. Secondly, we need to provide new answers to the problem of the debts of poor countries. In order to do this, the number of debt restructuring operations that favour the education and primary health care sectors should be dramatically increased, along the lines of the ‘debt-reducing and development contracts’ (C2D) implemented by France. We need to go further than the HIPS ‘heavily indebted poor countries’ initiative and engage in a vast programme for the cancellation of the debt of developing countries. We need to think about the conditions of access of developing countries to international financing, in accordance with the guidelines mentioned by the French Prime Minister. (Intervention cut short pursuant to Article 137 of the Rules of Procedure) - Napolitano report (A5-0023/2002) Fatuzzo . – (IT) Mr President, I voted for the Napolitano report. The Convention is extremely important and we all support it. However, I would like to take this opportunity to state that, in my opinion, there is a lack of democracy in the way the delegates from the European Parliament to the Convention were chosen. I feel, for example, that Mr Méndez de Vigo would have been much happier if the House had elected him by secret ballot, as the President of Parliament and you yourself, Mr Vice-President, were elected. Everybody would have voted for him and the vote would probably have been unanimous, but that would have constituted a genuine, democratic selection of candidates and therefore of Members of the European Parliament to this Convention. I would like to point out here that although ‘a good start is half the battle’, in this case, a bad start means working twice as hard. I hope that, in future, the appointment of European Parliament representatives to these important bodies will be more democratic.

Political group: PSE