Brussels, 12/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - The ACP/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, from 19 to 22 March, its second session in Libreville in the Gabon, with a varied agenda: - conflict prevention; - access for ACP countries to new information technologies (general report by the German Social Democrat Karine Junker); - bovine encephalopathy spongiform and other issues relating to food safety in the context of ACP-EU trade relations; - the "everything but arms" proposal and its impact on ACP exports; - migrations; - racism; - depleted uranium munitions used in the operations in the Balkans. Commissioner Poul Nielson, the Swedish Minister for Cooperation, Maj-Inger Klingvall, the EU Council President, and the Namibian Minister for Trade and Industry, Hidipo Hamutenya, President of the ACP Council, will take part in the Assembly's debates.
The reforms of the Assembly's working methods will also be one of the issue being discussed during this session that will provide the opportunities for parliamentarians to gather, as an experiment, in three workshops covering: (1) basic question of health and education in Central Africa; (2) EU aid to agriculture and infrastructure in Central Africa; (3) prevention and conflict resolution policies. This kind of meeting must foreshadow the creation, within the Assembly, of several thematic committees. The report by the Spanish Socialist Miguel Angel Martinez, which the European Parliament will examine on Wednesday, suggests several other modification to the working methods of the ACP-EU Assembly. EUROPE will return to this in more detail.