Brussels, 19/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the ACP/EU brings together an equal number of MEPs and parliamentarians from the 79 ACP countries (Africa/Caribbean and the Pacific) twice a year, and opened on Monday in Vienna for its eleventh session (19-22 June). The APP agenda contains: the energy question in ACP countries, the role of regional integration in the promotion of peace and security, fishing and social and environmental aspects in developing countries. Reports prepared by the permanent committees of the JPA on each of these subjects will guide the preliminary debates towards adoption of the current resolutions. Avian flu and the situation in the Sudan will be the subject of emergency resolutions. The Assembly will also have a debate on progress in negotiations for economic partnership agreements and the Doha Round, in which Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Billie Miller, vice prime minister of Barbados will participate. A debate is also planned with Development Commissioner Louis Michel and the acting president of the Council of the EU, Hans Winkler. In his opening speech, Josep Borrell, president of the EP highlighted the need, quality in the ACP/EU partnership, a joint approach to managing immigration. “Those who believe that a new wall along our southern border will protect them are completely mistaken. If Europe does not go to the South, the South will come, illegally or clandestinely to Europe. We will propose that the question of migration be placed at the heart of the ACP-EU partnership so that policy can be worked on jointly, in a spirit of co-development. We will also support the action plan adopted by the ACP ministers in April to create a migration observatory”.
Louis Claude Nyassa from the Cameroon and acting ACP co-president emphasised what way forward they should take for obtaining satisfactory results for the two parties in the negotiations on EPA, “Although we are progressing towards agreement on the Economic Partnership Agreements which is scheduled for December 2007 and the entry into force of the new trade ACP-EU regime from 1 January 2008, there are still many concerns of the ACP countries. For the EU negotiators, more emphasis is put on market access, while for the ACP, the main concerns lies in the development dimension of the Economic Partnership Agreements”.
Glennys Kinnock (British Labour Party) European co-president of the APP highlighted the importance of adequate finance for public development aid for attaining the Millennium Development Objectives. She declared that “2005 was a watershed and now we need to take stock and assess whether things are on track. On levels of aid, there is a lot of 'creative accounting' going on by donors. True aid figures continue to be obscured because official figures still count debt cancellation deals as new foreign aid. Once we take into account this clear inflation of the figures, the G8's overall increase in aid for 2005 stands at a meagre 9%”.