Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to congratulate Mr Imbeni because I believe he has produced a splendid report and, while we were debating it in committee, we were already in complete agreement with his proposals. The Socialist Group believes that aid policy must be the flagship of the European Union’s external activities insofar as it reflects the ideas which must inspire the construction of the European Union, that is to say, solidarity and cohesion on a global level. In these times of Commission reform, when many Community policies and procedures are being questioned, humanitarian aid has been evaluated positively by different bodies and, of course, on a political level, by Parliament. It is true that there has been a lot of criticism of humanitarian aid. However, we, who have seen and evaluated what ECHO has done, believe that its work has been very positive. This report therefore serves to ratify the principle of humanitarian aid as a right for people involved in disasters and an obligation on the part of the international community, in which the European Union is a major player, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Nevertheless and with a view to the future, we must take some steps forward. Firstly, we must overcome the so-called ‘grey area’ which was mentioned earlier, that is to say, the interregnum between the end of emergency aid and the beginning of the rehabilitation and development actions. While this ‘grey area’ continues, in which nobody is administratively responsible, there will be people who do not receive assistance for no other reason than a lack of internal coordination within the Commission. We have seen this in the case of Mozambique and other disasters. Humanitarian aid did arrive, but during this interregnum it has not continued for rehabilitation and development cooperation. Coordination within the Commission and complementarity with the Member States and other donors are factors which are fundamental to the efficiency which reform is intended to produce. Secondly, it is urgent that we increase the number of staff dedicated to humanitarian aid activities. The number of ECHO’s staff is not proportional to the importance of its work. Thirdly – and this is closely related to the previous point – the budget for humanitarian aid must be increased proportionally with its political importance and the real objectives we wish to achieve and which can be counted in the most important terms: human lives. In this respect, the Commission and the Council’s budgetary proposals are far from meeting what we believe to be the humanitarian needs. Lastly, we must try harder and harder to improve the decentralisation and flexibility of relations with agents for humanitarian aid, fundamentally the NGOs. An instrument was mentioned earlier, DIPECHO, which provides operative preparation for disaster situations. We believe that it is essential that, when a humanitarian catastrophe occurs, whether natural or caused by man, instruments are already in place. In this respect, we wish to highlight the importance of DIPECHO. The Socialist Group supports the principles which govern humanitarian aid and its future in the terms which I expressed earlier. We do not believe that this should become a token policy, but rather a flagship, together with development cooperation, of the European Union’s external action. Mr Imbeni said earlier – I do not know if the Commissioner heard what he said because he was talking at the time, but it seems to me to be very important – that there must be an awareness-raising campaign on the significance of humanitarian aid, on what this humanitarian aid means to us, the European Union. Mr Imbeni also said that the costs of that campaign should not be met with money intended for humanitarian aid. I believe that this point, the subject of an amendment which has been presented this afternoon, is important and deserves our support.

Political group: PSE