Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, before this debate we would have liked to ask the Council a question on the policy of complementarity. We tried to, but we were unable to. It has not been possible, and we regret this because the truth is, Commissioner, that on this matter you are not alone. There are also the Member States and the Council. In any event, I believe that the report which Mrs Ferrer has presented this afternoon is a sound report and, as she too has said, we would have liked to have a joint text. We are dealing with development policy in a piecemeal way and this prevents us from having an overview. Her report can, however, be considered to be an important contribution. This report is of an importance which transcends the material scope of development aid policy. As well as being a requirement of the Treaty, complementarity between Community aid policy and that of the Member States, is an invaluable instrument for helping the Union and the Member States to progress along a common path in the field of aid. We Socialists believe that development aid policy in general must be the flagship of Community external action and yet there is no such complementarity, apart from a few pilot projects. We are failing to use a mechanism which would to such a large extent maximise the resources, which are becoming scarcer, dedicated to aid as the political result of a joint effort, despite the repeated requests of this Parliament and the repeated resolutions of the Council itself, which basically has ultimate responsibility in this area. Complementarity is currently expressed in operational coordination on the ground and in the commitology procedure in Brussels. With regard to the former, I have already said that it is only applied in certain pilot projects. As for commitology, I will give you an example of how this is not working either: the Latin America committee has only met twice this year, instead of on a monthly basis which used to be the case and which would be necessary for it to work. Some of the programmes approved by this committee, such as the regional programme for the reconstruction of Central America in relation to Hurricane Mitch, are still to be implemented. There is a clear lack of political will to implement the measures which we decide on in Parliament, and that leads to inefficiency in the achievement of our political objectives, to a gradual paralysis of the functioning of the European institutions and to a bad image which, as the previous speaker said, is sometimes projected to the public. Complementarity with the Member States, coherence between Community policies and coordination between departments must form the basis of development aid policy if this policy is to fulfil this Parliament’s minimum requirements in terms of efficiency. There are problems with the diversity of instruments and the duplication of procedures, but the real problem is the lack of political will. As has been said before, the States must overcome their individual tendencies – which often reflect their concerns about former colonial relationships or other factors – and commit themselves to a common European project. If we do not adopt this policy, we will not be efficient in terms of development cooperation. The Commission now has the opportunity to include these elements in its reform and the Council has the historic responsibility to involve itself in the definition and implementation of Community policies. Both institutions can rely on the strong support of the Socialist Group in Parliament in relation to development aid policy. The policy of complementarity between national and Community policies has a total of 16 players (15+1). Coherence between Community policies and coordination between departments within the Commission are intended to create what we wish to be the Union’s development aid policy, with the aim of improving the efficiency of European aid by helping to optimise the use of resources, both human and financial, and to make the European Union more visible, thereby making it more efficient and giving it a greater presence in the international community. We hope that all of this will be introduced with the reform and that we will have coherent, complementary and coordinated policies in order to achieve greater efficiency.

Political group: PSE