Mr President, I am today proposing that the Commission should be given discharge in respect of the financial management of the sixth, seventh and eighth European Development Funds for the 1999 financial year. Unfortunately, we had to postpone the discharge in the spring, because I as rapporteur had received insufficient information from the Commission. This information is now available and I would like to specifically thank the Commission for its cooperation. I can recommend discharge today without any reservations. Nevertheless, I hope and indeed expect that the fruitful cooperation which we have had with the Commission since the spring will continue when it comes to future reporting relating to the Development Fund, because such cooperation is needed to jointly solve problems in this area. However, my report is still a very critical one. It refers to 1999, and 1999 was the first budget year for which the new Commission was fully responsible. However, full responsibility does not mean that the Commission can be blamed for the mistakes of the past. We all know that reforms take time and we can see that the necessary measures have been initiated. Despite that, I would like to briefly reiterate my criticism. It is implementation that is at stake here. For example, there was a gap between commitments at EUR 2.69 billion and payments actually made in 1999 at EUR 1.27 billion. Unfortunately, the same also applies to the implementation of the debt relief initiative for the poorest countries in the world. I am, of course, aware that this reflects the general crisis in development aid, and that this situation is not unique to the Development Fund or to the Commission's work, and that all the Member States, together with the Commission and the Parliament, need to consider new approaches to development policy. The problem is a failure of political will to provide aid on a generous scale, combined with a lack of instruments to effectively implement the available funds. That is the problem in a nutshell. In view of the lateness of the hour, I do not want to go into great detail, but I would like to emphasise that the Commission's approach to solving this problem is a step in the right direction. It involves strengthening local delegations, providing them with better equipment and preparation, in short, making local delegations more competent. However, I would also like to make an appeal to Parliament in this context. In the Committee on Budgets, we had protracted debates on the need for higher staffing levels, particularly for delegations, and the Committee on Budgets put pressure on the Committee on Budgetary Control to make these posts available and not to play spurious political games with a view to making the Commission deliver reforms before we approve staff changes. This is absurd of course, because these posts in local delegations are needed above all else so that reforms can be made in the first place. The further efforts at reform described in the Commission's internal audit report are also important and need to be discussed in detail between the Commission and the Parliament. I would like though to briefly mention a couple of expectations following on from the report of the Court of Auditors. I hope that in future these will be the hallmark of the discharge process and of cooperation between the Parliament and Commission. One important point is that we need an ongoing assessment of progress in implementing measures to reform public administration in the ACP States. We need to monitor progress achieved in the key sectors of health and education, using meaningful indicators such as the increase in the number of teachers or doctors, thus providing more qualitative checks instead of quantitative checks. This would also mean the discharge process in the Parliament itself having to change. In order words, we would have to shift our examination towards quality control and refrain from making a great hue and cry about points of detail. We would also have to carry out an annual audit of accounting and sound management of resources on the basis of samples and, lastly, apply clearly defined sanctions – such as the reduction or suspension of payments – in cases where the agreed reform measures are not complied with. If we implement these measures together, then I believe that we will be jointly taking an important step towards enhancing the structure of development aid, and that we will be better placed to convince the EU's taxpayers and to secure approval for the necessary expenditure. I say this because the situation prevailing since 11 September has demonstrated how important development aid is. It will be a pivotal factor. Furthermore, the EU has now become the world's largest provider of development aid. That is why we urgently need this joint reform.

Political group: Verts-ALE