Brussels, 12/12/2000 (Agence Europe) - During the opening, on Tuesday in Brussels, of the Donor Coordination Meeting for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), Catherine Day, deputy Director General of the European Commissioner for External Relations reiterated, once more, the importance of rapid humanitarian and material aid to ease the immediate needs of the Yugoslav population, but also to support the new political regime established in Serbia.
"We will focus on how best to meet urgent needs, to help the population through the winter in reasonable conditions. This is important, not only for obvious humanitarian reasons, but also to preserve and accelerate the dynamic for change, which must be sustained over the coming years. The FRY is now clearly embarked on a long-term process of political and economic change", she said. The present most urgent needs in FRY concern foodstuffs, energy (lack of means for heating in winter), social aid, health (lack of medication), education, etc. The EU is presently in the process of drawing up its EUR 200 million emergency aid package, by placing emphasis on its needs, said Mrs Day.
As for the medium-term needs, the main challenge in the FRY will be to define and to implement global economic transition and conversion programmes, "aimed at overcoming the heritage of several years of economic mismanagement and international isolation", underlined on Tuesday the Vice-President of the World Bank, Johannes Linn. Once the Yugoslav government has established an programme for economic reforms, the European Commission and the World Bank will examine it together with the Yugoslav authorities. Then, it will be up to the Commission and the World Bank to draw-up a report ("Economic recovery and Transition report") that they will submit to the International donors conference for the FRY that will take place during next year; no date has yet been set.