Mr President, I also warmly congratulate the rapporteur who has shown enormous commitment to this report. We thank you very much for it. We are clearly in a very serious situation. The regulation for South Africa expired on 31 December 1999. It is clear, as the rapporteur has suggested, that we need to proceed with some urgency in order to provide a legal base for our essential work in South Africa. This budget line is the work of the European Parliament. I was the budget rapporteur in 1994 when the Development Committee established the line. That was because we wanted to see practical and tangible assistance for South Africa's peaceful transition to a free and democratic country. Surely that has been one of the most encouraging events in recent history. Now the Republic, with its new President Mr Thabo Mbeki, faces new challenges which, in my view, require sustained partnership with the European Union. This is not the time, as others have suggested, to have the kind of mean-spirited delays that we have seen from the Council; neither is it the time for political point-scoring by other institutions of the European Union. Indeed, it is my view that the Council has rather cynically orchestrated the eight-month delay in response to the first reading in order that it could better manage its negotiations on the South Africa trade and development agreements. This has put life-saving programmes at risk and any delay now would exacerbate the existing impression in South Africa of a European Union which seeks only to serve its own interests first. Coming as this does after ouzo and grappa, we are in danger of sending a very bad signal to South Africa. Decisions need to be made. We cannot risk delay. For example, I am very familiar with the South African Human Rights Foundation. That would be endangered. The Foundation for Cultural Initiatives programme, the South Africa Labour Development Trust, policing in the Eastern Cape – all these programmes would be very seriously threatened by delays. If there is delay, if agreement is not reached on the regulation, then new programmes will be affected too. Even the 2000 budget of EUR 1.54 million would not be committed. Let us be clear what we are talking about. We are talking about water and sanitation programmes which do so much to improve the quality of life of people in the townships and rural areas. We would endanger the SADC HIV/Aids Programme, regarded by all as being one of the most efficient the European Union operates. We risk jeopardising economic developments in the Eastern Cape and work in the Eastern Cape with the Ministry of Education. We risk jeopardising support for social housing programmes in South Africa. In this Parliament we have to make every effort now, as the rapporteur has said, to make it possible for this money to move as speedily and as efficiently as it can to the people of South Africa. The European Parliament position is, and always has been, realistic and morally right. However I must express my grave concern about the possible misery which would be caused were we to delay. As usual we should make it very clear that we in the Development Committee regard the budget figure that we have here before us, as purely indicative. We see it as a reference point only, not as anything that we will not seek to change when it comes to our committee. It is the first year of the South Africa Trade Agreement. How does it look in our first year if we do not fully commit the funding and meet our obligations? We must continue our commitment to supporting South African efforts to overcome the legacy of apartheid. To do that we have to have a regulation sooner rather than later. I hope that after we have heard the Commissioner we will have the opportunity to discuss his views further and to discuss the very deeply worrying issues which delay on this regulation raises.

Political group: PSE