Brussels, 02/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - At the European Parliament, MEPs are busy preparing their contribution to the position the EU will take at the third UN conference on financing for development post-2015 (13-16 July, Addis Ababa). On 31 March, the Parliament's development committee, chaired by Linda McAvan (S&D, UK), held a second exchange of views in Brussels, which was promising according to rapporteur Pedro Silva Pereira (S&D, Portugal). Time is running out as the report must be ready in May, before the Council conclusions.
“We need a report that contains a clear and strong political message. This is crucial if we want our contribution to be able to influence the EU's position and succeed in ensuring the necessary success for development policies. We therefore need to resist the temptation of a report that is too long and complex”, Silva Pereira warned. He has endorsed around 30 of the 291 proposals for amendments that have been submitted to his draft report. However, given “everyone's involvement” in this file, he is confident in the ability of the political groups to meet this challenge, making use of compromises and flexibility.
In Silva Pereira's view, “there is a very large consensus in the Parliament on the key points of development financing post-2015” - in other words, the need to have a comprehensive approach to the financing in order to ensure a high level of official development assistance (ODA) while promoting a fairer and more effective mobilisation of national resources and a better alignment of the private sector with the sustainable development objectives; - the need for the EU to play a leading role in these negotiations which might translate into clear commitments and a clear timetable on the resolve to give 0.7% of GNI to ODA; - the importance of the additional nature of the financial commitments allocated to the fight against climate change so that these commitments do not take anything from the amounts allocated for the fight against poverty; - the importance of international tax cooperation and the promotion of fair tax systems which are able to fight fraud and tax evasion and without which the available resources could not be mobilised; - and the importance of evaluation and control mechanisms both for the financial assistance and for its results in order to fight inefficiency and corruption and to guarantee that the aid does indeed reach its destination so that the sustainable development objectives can be met.
In order to strengthen this consensus, Silva Pereira has announced that he will propose a block of around 20 compromise amendments, which will focus on strengthening the coherence of policies, the idea of ownership of development procedures, innovative sources of financing, the role of the private sector, international tax cooperation, the principle of additionality in the financing for climate action, and the quality of the disaggregated data and statistics to be able to follow the sustainable development objectives very closely. (Aminata Niang)