Brussels, 15/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - The ACP/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA), which brings together members of the European Parliament and their colleagues from the States of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific twice a year, is to hold its ninth session in Bamako (Mali) from 16 to 21 April). As usual, the APP, jointly chaired by British Labour MEP Glenys Kinnock (for the EU) and, for the first time, Sharon Hay Webster, a Jamaican MP (for the ACPs), will debate topical issues and shared concerns. The situation in Sudan- especially Darfur where massacres continue- and in the Great Lakes region will be the subjects of emergency resolutions.
The Assembly will adopt reports by the standing committees on: progress in primary education for all and gender equality as part of the millennium development objectives (co-rapporteurs Maria Elena Valenciano Marinez-Orozco, PES, Spain, and Donald Ramotar, Guyana). Evelyne Herfkens, general coordinator of the Campaign on the millennium objectives of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will take part in the debate; -the budgetisation of the European Development Fund proposed by the European Commission from 2008 (the report on this was already on the agenda of the previous APP in The Hague in November 2004, but a resolution could not be reached, due to a lack of consensus between the two rapporteurs; Thierry Cornillet, ALDE, France, and David Matongo of Zambia); - post-conflict rehabilitation in the ACP countries (co-rapporteurs José Ribeiro e Castro, EPP-ED, Portugal, and Ana Sithole, Mozambique).
Debates are also scheduled on: the state of play in trade negotiations on economic partnership agreements (EPA) between the EU and ACP regions of regional integration; -the sugar regime at the WTO; -the consequences of the tsunami of last December for the ACP countries and the prevention of similar disasters in the future.
Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Peter Mandelson, Commissioner for Trade, and Jean-Louis Schiltz, Luxembourg minister for cooperation and humanitarian action, who chairs the Council of the EU, will address the Assembly on 19 April.