European Parliament resolution on the Commission communication on complementarity between Community and Member State policies on development cooperation (COM(1999) 218 - C5-0179/1999 - 1999/2156(COS))
Date: 2000-09-21
Institutions: Committee on Development, European Parliament
Subjects: EU aid, development aid, political cooperation, sustainable development

17.5.2001

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Official Journal of the European Communities

C 146/107

Thursday 21 September 2000

8.
Calls on the Commission to make it perfectly clear, by including them in the guidelines, that
reciprocal or unilateral agreements on supply (‘trade supplies’) are not affected by the ban laid down in
Article 81(1);

9.
Recognises the need to prevent the re-nationalisation of EU competition law and urges the Commis-
sion to discourage national competition authorities from undertaking a second consideration of such
exempted agreements under their own national law;

Expresses its concern that guidelines 122 and 141 set an arbitrary market power threshold of 15 %,

10.
and urges the Commission to increase this threshold to a minimum figure of 20 %;

Calls on the Commission to increase the length of the transitional period for introduction of these

11.
regulations to two years;

Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and Commission and the parlia-

12.
ments of the Member States.

15. Complementarity between development cooperation policies

A5-0227/2000

European Parliament resolution on the Commission communication on complementarity between
Community and Member State policies on development cooperation (COM(1999) 218 ’ C5-0179/
1999 ’ 1999/2156(COS))

The European Parliament,

1 having regard to the Commission communication (COM(1999) 218 1 C5-0179/1999),

1 having regard to Rule 47(1) of its Rules of Procedure,

1 having regard to the report of the Committee on Development and Cooperation (A5-0227/2000),

A. having regard to its resolutions of 28 October 1993 on increased coordination of the development aid
provided by the Member States and the Community (1), 21 February 1997 on the communication
from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on complementarity between the
Community’s development cooperation policy and the policies of the Member States (2) and 17 Febru-
ary 2000 on the coherence of the various policies (3),

B. whereas Article 177 of the EC Treaty states that Community policy in the sphere of development

cooperation shall be complementary to the policies pursued by the Member States,

C. having regard to the Council resolution of 21 May 1999 on complementarity,

D. whereas Article 180 of the EC Treaty states that the Community and the Member States shall coordi-
nate their policies on development cooperation and consult each other on their aid programmes,
including in international organisations and during international conferences,

E. whereas the European Union is the world’s largest donor of public development aid,

F. whereas the complementarity of development policies must form part of an overall strategy aimed

also at ensuring the consistency and coordination of these policies,

(1) OJ C 315, 22.11.1993, p. 250.
(2) OJ C 85, 17.3.1997, p. 178.
(3)
‘Texts Adopted’, Item 7.

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G.

recalling, in particular, that on several occasions it has stressed the importance of achieving increased
coordination and complementarity in order to further progress towards the objectives of European
development policy; regretting the lack of real political will in this respect shown to date by the
Council and the Member States,

H. whereas the difference in outlook of national policies and European policy is one of the causes of the
lack of coordination between Community policy on development aid and the policies of the Member
States in this respect,

I.

convinced that the European Union is the appropriate arena for removing the political obstacles and
making progress towards the objective of achieving complementarity between the policies of the
Member States and Community policy,

J. whereas on those occasions when the Commission and Member States have practised coordination in
the framework of international organisations and conferences, for example during the Beijing and
Cairo conferences, the results have been extremely positive,

K. having regard to the new mechanisms introduced by the Bretton Woods institutions with effect from
1999, including in particular the Comprehensive Development Framework and the Poverty Reduction
Strategy Paper,

L. welcoming the Commission proposal, and hoping that it will lead to progress in the sphere of com-

plementarity,

M. whereas the European Union’s development cooperation policy must be strengthened in view of world
developments, particularly the increased inequality and disparities that are accompanying globalisation;
whereas increased complementarity would facilitate this,

N. whereas,

in its communication on reforming external aid, the Commission makes provision for

streamlining the comitology procedure,

Deplores the fact that the important objectives for European Union aid, namely, complementarity,

1.
coordination and consistency, are dealt with separately and not in a coherent fashion;

2.
Calls on the Council and Commission to step up their efforts to achieve complementarity and, in
particular, to implement the various resolutions on this question adopted by the Council and the European
Parliament;

3. Welcomes the fact that on the basis of pilot schemes conducted in several countries, the transmission
of information and consultation on the ground appear to have improved in recent times;

Considers, however, that the Member States should step up information exchanges and communica-
4.
tion with the Commission in order to improve coordination between them and enable complementarity
between development policies to be achieved;

5.
Regrets, however, that the Commission has not carried out an overall assessment which would have
highlighted any difficulties and might have helped to determine more clearly exactly how to achieve the
most rapid progress;

6.
Agrees with the Council and Commission that operational coordination, as long as it is based on a
consistent framework, is the best way to achieve the objective of complementarity between the policies of
the Member States and the Community and significantly influence the international coordination mechan-
isms which include all donors;

Calls on the Council and Commission to amend the comitology system so as to concentrate Member
7.
States’ participation during the planning stage, in order to ensure complementarity of planning and greater
flexibility in the implementation of individual projects;

Supports the Commission’s proposals on operational coordination and the management of the

8.
Union’s human resources;

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9.
Emphasises that an indispensable prerequisite for achieving greater complementarity is the devolu-
tion of decision-making powers, within both the European Union and the Member States development
cooperation administrations, and asks the Commission to present, in the near future, its plans on how it
intends to strengthen decentralisation;

Believes that, in order to enhance the effectiveness of Community aid, an increase is needed in the

10.
Community staff responsible for managing development cooperation funds;

11. Welcomes the fact that the Commission has listed certain areas in which it is best placed to act, but
regrets that this list does not include overall responsibility for reviewing development policy and making
proposals in this area; this review should be undertaken in close cooperation with the Member States and
is a vital precondition for attaining the objective of complementarity as well as making it possible for
European concerns and ideas to be given a hearing in international fora;

12.
Considers increased consistency, in the broadest sense of the term, of the European Union’s devel-
opment initiatives a matter of priority with a view to increasing the effectiveness and credibility of the
European Union’s development policies;

13.
Calls on the Commission to draw up as quickly as possible an operational action plan to identify
and propose priority action areas and instruments to make it possible to speed up the introduction of
complementarity;

14.
Considers that, in addition to the present communication, the Commission should draw up an over-
all text addressing the issues of complementary, consistency and coordination, in order to strengthen Com-
munity and bilateral development policy across the board within the European Union and thus give it a
higher profile;

Regrets that the crucial question of coordination within internal fora has not been given sufficient

15.
attention among the concerns and proposals set out by the Commission;

Calls on the Council and Commission,

16.
in the framework of complementarity, consistency and
operational coordination, to take into account the existence of non-governmental agencies, particularly
NGDOs, and to support and encourage their participation in Community and Member State bodies work-
ing to achieve coordination;

Stresses that, if it is to be effective, on-the-spot coordination must be the responsibility of the coun-

17.
tries concerned as part of strategies they themselves have chosen;

Agrees with the Commission that progress on complementarity requires both sufficient political will
18.
and operational resources, and is delighted that recently this political will has strengthened at Union level
despite the reticence of certain Member States; calls, however, for this increased political will to be trans-
lated into concrete action;

19.
Calls on the Council and Commission to inform Parliament about concrete progress with planned
and on-going initiatives to promote complementarity, particularly in relation to the process of defining
country strategy papers;

20.
Regrets that, as in other areas of development policy, the Commission does not have sufficient
resources to carry out the necessary studies and analyses, and was therefore obliged to use work produced
by other bodies, whose political and social sensibilities differ from those of the European Union; calls,
therefore, for the Commission’s capacities to be sufficiently enhanced in this area;

21.
Deplores the fact that the Commission has not carried out an assessment of coordination in inter-
national organisations, and calls for a study to be conducted into the real opportunities for coordination
between the Commission and the Member States in international organisations and conferences with a
view to increasing the complementarity and efficiency of their activities in these fora; calls on the Secre-
tary-General of the Council and High Representative for the CFSP to draw up a study into the scope for
coordinating the Member States’ positions within the various international fora;

Urges that the standard framework drawn up by the Commission for national strategy papers for

22.
each Community country should be implemented as soon as possible;

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23.
Calls on the Commission and Member States to coordinate their external services so as to ensure
that complementarity is effective on the ground; with this in view, calls on the Commission to take
account of the objective of complementarity in its planned measures for decentralising and reforming the
delegations;

Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and Commission, and to the parlia-

24.
ments of the Member States.

16. Racism

B5-0766/2000

European Parliament resolution on the European Union’s position at the World Conference
Against Racism and the current situation in the Union

The European Parliament,

1 having regard to Articles 6, 7 and 29 of the EU Treaty and Article 13 of the EC Treaty,

1 having regard to the relevant international legal instruments of the UN, the ILO, Unesco and the
Council of Europe, with particular reference to the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of
National Minorities,

1 having regard to its resolutions, in particular that of 16 March 2000 (1), and the report of its commit-

tee of enquiry, on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism,

1 having regard to the adoption on 29 June 2000, with the European Parliament’s support, of the
Council Directive 2000/43/EC implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irre-
spective of racial or ethnic origin,

1 having regard to the European Union’s establishment of the European Observatory on Racism and

Xenophobia in Vienna,

A. whereas the number of reported violent racist attacks on immigrants and people belonging to minor-

ity groups in the Member States has increased;

B. having regard to the electoral successes of racist and xenophobic parties,

C. whereas there is a close correlation between the increase in the number of reported attacks and in the
activities of extreme right-wing political parties and movements, and whereas those parties and move-
ments are using new world-wide information technologies in pursuit of their objectives,

1.
Expresses its support for the European Conference to be held by the Council of Europe from 11-
13 October 2000 in Strasbourg on the subject ‘All different, all equal’, the European contribution to the
World Conference Against Racism to be held in 2001;

Notes that racism and xenophobia are prevalent throughout the world and that such forms of racial

2.
discrimination constitute one of the most serious violations of human rights;

3.
Calls therefore on the Council, in compliance with the principles and requirements in this area laid
down in the Amsterdam Treaty and the future European Charter of Fundamental Rights, to present a
common European Union position at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism;

Considers that this common position of the European Union should reflect the Union’s commitment
4.
to work, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty, for a better understanding of the causes and
effects of racism and xenophobia and for the implementation of a policy of preventing and punishing
such behaviour;

(1)

‘Texts Adopted’, Item 17.