Brussels, 12/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - Important international rendez-vous - the UN conference on funding development (Monterrey, Mexico, March 2002) an the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, September 2002) - and post-11 September were the backdrop and engine of several debates that dominated the Development Council (for initial results, see EUROPE of 9 November, p.8). Judging these debates "very constructive", when speaking to the press, the President-in-Office, Eddy Boutmans welcomed the new impetus provided by the Council to the establishment, by the dialogue with the Commission, of a timetable for increasing the amounts allocated by Union Member States to public aid to development (PAD) to reach, which is not yet the case, 0.7% of their GNP. He also welcomed progress observed in the reform of the management of the Community's external aid - notably in terms of financial planning, the speed of delivery of funds committed and the liquidation of arrears, which Commissioner Poul Nielsen referred to - and the conclusions adopted over the current challenges of aid to development.
"We recall that last September, the international community provided itself as goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015, that the events of 11 September must in no case push this development agenda to the back burner, and that if we want to attain the goal of the Millennium declaration, it is essential to take measures and play an active role to ensure the success of the Monterrey Conference. We confirm the need to increase the PAD, but also to find new sources of financing such as the tax on CO2 emissions or on speculative transactions (Tobin Tax). The Council will also ask the OECD's Committee on Aid to Development is tax reductions conceded to those who give grants to private foundations for development co-operation may be accounted in the PAD", he declared. Greeting before the press a representative from a NGO (European Association of Zoos and Aquariums) who handed him a petition with some 2 million signatures urging the Union and Member States to galvanise against the extermination of the large apes and the illegal trade in bush meat, in West Africa, Eddy Boutmans assured that this demand would, in future, be taken account of by the Council. "Our funding for the protection of forests is a precondition, as is the action plan that the Council has just adopted on the preservation of bio-diversity in developing countries", he added. The conclusions adopted by the Council on fishing and combating poverty "which aim to introduce in fisheries agreements between the Union and developing countries, taking account of these countries' interests," show the same concern for the coherence of Union policies.