Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Ferrer’s report deals with the Commission communication on complementarity between Community and Member State policies on development cooperation. I share her disappointment that we are discussing this in isolation. Instead, we should be having a searching debate on a global strategy for our cooperation with the Southern countries, which involves the triptych of complementarity, coordination and cohesion, also known as the three Cs, where Europe continues to fail so miserably. This, in fact, also goes for the Member States, because the European Member States simply refuse to take these values on board and prefer to stick to their own neo-colonial ideas. The lack of efficient Community development cooperation therefore serve the Member States as an excellent alibi for not having to attain complementarity, and certainly not coordination and cohesion. Some Member States make the bold claim that the Community should not adopt development policy but should delegate everything to the Member States. We certainly do not share this view. Anyone who is genuinely concerned about fair-minded world relations in terms of development must admit that, all too often, the Member States’ own strategic and economic interests prevail over development interests. At best, they try to mitigate or alleviate the effects of economic policy pursued by the rich countries in the fields of globalisation, our need for raw materials, minerals, oil, etc. There is no doubt that we want poor countries to be included in the general economic and cultural developments in the world in the interests of the populations concerned and not only in the interests of the industrialised world. This is why we need to free ourselves from these neo-colonial dynamics and relations which feed dependency and destroy the environment. We need to abolish poverty in the world. This requires a global, multilateral strategy, which, first and foremost relies on the coordination of Member State and Community development policy in every country, in every recipient country and at international level. This is more important than complementarity. There is no doubt that a more coordinated policy would have a far greater impact. The contrast between the high level of European aid, which accounts for more than half of all aid globally, and the little political impact, for example upon ending armed conflict and severe violations of human rights, is really poignant. If coordination and complementarity were already in place in the recipient countries, donor countries would prefer to hoist their national flags there too. Is the Council actually prepared to change the system of comitology? This, in my opinion, is a sine qua non. It will be a real challenge for the Commission to delegate EU responsibilites to our delegations based out there. If this fails, then opponents of the joint development policy are bound to press for abolition full stop. With regard to coordination at international level, we would welcome a European approach which can be different from that of the IMF and the World Bank. We do not want to be an extension of the Bretton Woods institutions. We want to play a leading role in the world. This is why these Member States should stop telling their electorate that nothing in Europe ever works. It is high time they acknowledged their own share of responsibility for these failures, but we should do the same.

Political group: Verts-ALE