Wednesday, 8 June 2011 - Strasbourg

Explanations of vote:

Report Gay Mitchell

Pino Arlacchi (S&D ), in writing . − The purpose of this report on the establishment of a financial instrument for development cooperation is to set at an early stage a Parliament position on this topic. This position should be based on the lessons drawn from its scrutiny of the implementation of our development cooperation.

I appreciated the method followed by the rapporteur in evaluating the outcome and modalities of the EU cooperation for development. The rapporteur clearly states that, in spite of the constructiveness of the dialogue with the Commission, the Commission itself did not change its behaviour in development matters as Parliament recommended. Parliament’s position was only sporadically reflected in the draft implementing measures submitted by the Commission to the DCI management Committee.

This is partially understandable. The main partner of the Rapporteur was DG RELEX, whose main mandate is the promotion of EU interests in the rest of the world. But development cooperation is the one policy area of external action (besides humanitarian aid) which is not designed to serve EU interests, but to defend the interests of the most vulnerable populations of this planet. Since the position expressed in this report fully reflect this global inspiration, I was glad to vote in favour of it.
 

[source: www.europarl.europa.eu]