Brussels, 05/12/2000 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the Francisca Sauquillo Perez del Acro Report (PES) on the reform of aid to development by the European Commission, at its last plenary session, the European Parliament sets out several demands, relating to the structure of how aid is managed and the requirements in staff.
The EP "welcomes the fact that the Commission should have reformed its Relex services group", but "nevertheless fears that the separation between political responsibility and strategic executing decision and the monitoring of programmes should lead to a marginalisation of development policy within the Commission". It therefore calls "for a Community service responsible for international development to take responsibility for the whole cycle of cooperation for developing countries, including the programmes for Africa, Latin America, the Mediterranean countries and Asia". The EP also calls on the Commission to hand in a report in the first half of 2001 on implementation of the different elements of the reform of its Relex services. The EP is, moreover, in favour of the transfer of competencies to the Commission's external delegations in the beneficiary countries.
The Euro-MPs also call for the Commission to have sufficient staff for external aid, and more specifically aid to development. The EP launches an appeal to the Council to take account of the need to tackle "the structural problem of the inadequacy of human resources for managing funds relating to development cooperation".
In addition, the EP urges the Commission to base the reform of external aid "on a clear and detailed declaration, setting out the EU's goals in matters of external relations for the 21st Century, foremost of which would be the eradication of poverty".