Strasbourg, 18/04/2000 (Agence Europe) - Adopting a resolution by five political groups in the Africa-Europe Summit, the EP called for the creation of an appropriate joint structure so as to guarantee the follow-up of this initiative and insisted on being fully associated in the future as well as the inter-parliamentary delegations for the Mediterranean basin and the EU/ACP joint Assembly. The Parliament invites the EU and the African countries to work within the international framework to enable Africa to gradually integrate into the global economy without mortgaging their long-term development and the EU and its Member States to implement a global strategy within the international financial institutions so as to obtain the cancellation of debt. The Parliament deplores the absence of progress carried out by the EU and the African states in view of creating an appropriate mechanism for the prevention of conflicts, calls for the increase of aid in the fight against Aids and Malaria and invites the Commission to increase the Community support for the development of a anti-malaria vaccine.
During the debate the British Conservative John Corrie (Co-President of the EU-ACP Assembly) felt that the Cairo Action plan is "an excellent document," but said he was very disappointed of the absence at the Summit of representatives from African civil society and the European Parliament, (in particular, the two co-presidents of the joint Assembly). Glenys Kinnock (Labour, Britain) insisted on the eradication of poverty and when talking about the upcoming Summit in Dakar on basic education, it called on the Council to make the link between the policy of poverty eradication and the improvement of access to education. "The Cairo document shows that we have not forgotten Africa," said the Danish Liberal Lone Dybkjaer. After having plundered Africa for a long-time, Europe must today cancel the debt of these African countries to cancel its own debt to history, asserted the French Green Didier Rod who underlined certain insistencies by the Europeans, for example, who call for African countries to "cease fire while we stoke their fire through our arms exports." Joaquim Miranada (GUE. Portugal) said he was disappointed by the unsubstantial character of these conclusions and felt that this summit was essentially expressed through a family photo. According to him certain EU decisions such as those in the new EU-ACP convention, the chocolate and banana dossiers and the budgetary cuts show the lack of political will to establish a real Euro-African partnership.
The Council President Jaime Gama felt that the Summit enabled to launch the dialogue mechanism at the highest level and due to this constitutes "a U-turn in our relations." Answering the critics on the absence of concrete decision he said that a summit enables to express a political will, but is not made for deciding on technical measures. The fact that the EU has accepted for the first time to take into account African debt as a whole constitutes a U-turn, she said in feeling that it is now necessary to work towards the implementation of the undertakings made in Cairo. As for the absence of European Parliament and General Assembly representatives, Mr. Gama reminded that the organisation of a summit is the fruit of an agreement between the EU and its negotiators and raised the difficulties faced when it came to mentioning the Joint Assembly in the conclusions (certain African countries are not part of the Lomé Convention, while the Caribbean and Pacific countries are represented at the joint Assembly). Mr. Gama indicated that the Council would examine the possibility of a EP participation during the next summit in 2003.
Commissioner Poul Nielson hoped that the African countries considered as full partners in the 21-Century and regretted that a forum of civil society did not happen on the sidelines of the summit. Answering the remarks by the Parliamentarians on the eradication of poverty and debt, he said: "We are already very active, but we have to wonder if the G7 will follow us."