Mr President, Commissioner, ‘DOUBLE NOW’ cried 200 European schoolchildren last week in the Chamber of the European Parliament in Brussels. They were referring to the part of the Commission budget for development cooperation that is devoted to primary education. Currently, that is only 4%, and it must therefore be doubled to 8%, hence the famous ‘double now’ slogan. Education is an important means, if not the most important means, of combating poverty. Literacy breaks the vicious poverty circle in which many families have been imprisoned for generations. If countries are to develop further, they need an educated population. Education is also the key to improving the position of women. Across the world, 113 million children are still not receiving any education, and approximately two-thirds of these are girls. In 2000, the international community in North and South agreed that, by 2015, all children should be able to attend school. If that Millennium Development Goal, education for all, is to be achieved, we need more funds between us: an estimated EUR 8 billion extra to be able to educate every child by 2015. Incidentally, that is the same amount in total over the next few years as the war in Iraq cost in three weeks. Primarily, of course, developing countries themselves have to make approximately 20% of their budgets available for basic social services such as education and health care. The North must commit itself to the aim of together having produced additional resources for education by 2015. Some countries have to increase their total contribution, whilst others, within theirs, have to move funds over to education. Without that commitment on the part of North and South, all our combined efforts at effective poverty reduction have little chance of success. Fortunately, the European Union has a special responsibility in the field of education. The Commission and the Member States together constitute the world’s largest donors active in development cooperation. Therefore, they have to – and do – take the lead in policies aimed at sustainability and long-term solutions. Europe’s share of the figure of EUR 8 billion per year mentioned earlier is available. Much of it is lying dormant within the European budget, or can be released by the movement of funds. As the Commissioner knows, the Parliament is no advocate of granting budget support just like that, because money intended for education, for example, is then often used for completely different purposes, as we saw from the recent example of money being spent on defence in Uganda. Instead we advocate sectoral support, whereby not only the Finance Ministers are involved but, in this case, also the Ministers for Education. In addition, my report advocates an active role for teaching unions and parental organisations in the development of education plans in the developing country. After all, it is not we who develop a country; it develops itself. In response to our questions yesterday, Commissioner Nielson said that the Commission has, to date, made EUR 1.3 billion available for the next five years. That is a significant and important start. I also understood from his answers that the Commission is in the process of systematically looking into where, within the dormant funds, further possibilities lie for achieving a considerable increase. In addition to the funds within the ninth European Development Fund that are to be devoted to education, still more is needed if all the education targets are really to be achieved. Progress is too slow; we need to speed it up considerably. Priority must be given to doubling the budget for primary education, and, as part of this, it is equally important that the Commission’s Education for All Fast Track Initiative should play a leading role. The Fast Track Initiative is an initiative of Unesco, the World Bank and various donors, including the Commission. Developing countries – Mauritania and Niger, to name but two – receive accelerated, supplementary funding on the basis of education proposals. My report urges the Commission to convert its pledges into tangible financial resources. I am enormously pleased that my report can already be regarded as outdated on that point on account of the Commission’s pledge to finance the first seven countries. I appreciate that very much. It is a success for us all. Unfortunately, on many other points my report is very current, and by no means outdated. There remains to be addressed the important issue of girls, who still constitute the majority of the 113 million children not receiving any education. Many children still cannot attend school because they are working, whether voluntarily or against their will. Education is still not provided free of charge in many cases, which means that many parents cannot afford to send their children to school. In addition, education in developing countries has to contend with the loss of teachers due to AIDS, with an absence of, or too little, reading material, and with schools that are difficult to reach. In the post-conflict situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, education remains imperative, precisely because these are situations in which reconstruction is to be achieved from devastation and a heap of rubble. Fortunately there is a fair amount of good news, too. Benin and Gambia recently abolished school fees for girls, and Eritrea, for years ravaged by war, was recently awarded the International Literacy Prize. My report asks the Commission to report back in a year’s time on the implementation of this resolution, if it is adopted tomorrow, and I am assuming with some confidence that it will be. I hope that that progress report will be full of good news, and I consider it a tremendous stroke of luck for those sympathetic to the cause of education that the Commission has been prepared to make that EUR 1.3 billion available. By way of conclusion, I should like to say that last week it was 200 children in Brussels, this week it is in excess of 10 000 cards and petitions from Europeans sent to the Commission Representations in support both of my report and of the Commissioner. It is good that the public is aware of what we are doing here and that we are all proud of the work the European Union does. ‘Double now’: that was the slogan, and I shall keep saying it.

Political group: PSE