Brussels, 17/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - Knowing that the Seville European Council may take decisions on the future of the EU's development policy, the AGM of Eurostep (European Solidarity Towards Equal Participation of People, a group of European development NGOs) is urgently calling on EU heads of state to postpone decisions on reforming the Council of the EU. In a press release, Eurostep says that the Spanish Presidency and Javier Solana's ideas to cut the number of separate Council formations from 16 to 10 are being presented "as a technical reform in the functioning of the Council"… but would have "profound political consequences for the EU's development policy".
Eurostep Director Simon Stocker says that "abolishing the Development Council as a separate and identifiable entity within the Council structure… would surely signal that the EU's development policy, and the EUR 9 billion annual aid budget, will become a tool of the Common Foreign and Security Policy", while Folke Sundman, Eurostep President and Director of a Finnish NGO, Kepa, said that "any decision taken at this stage which would dissolve the Development Council will pre-empt the outcome of the European Convention".
Eurostep's statement for the Seville Summit say that "as a Global Player, the EU has Global responsibilities. These can only be fulfilled with a strong and separately identified development policy with the mechanisms within each of the EU's institutions to transform the policy into practice". Rather than taking an unsuitable, premature decision, Eurostep calls for "a full and open debate on the future external role of the EU, and on the place for development policy and its objectives", adding that "the EU's role in the world is central to the European Convention" and "it would be utterly wrong for the EU's government leaders to step this debate before it begins".