Monterrey
Apr02 |
Debt burden of poor
countries
Khanbhai
(PPE-DE). -
Madam President, I was one of the five Members of Parliament who went to
Monterrey and I want to put it on record that what Mr. Nielson did before
the Monterrey Conference was extremely good. He persuaded the 15 Member
States of the European Union to make a commitment that by 2006 their
contribution for development finance will be 0.33% of GDP. Many Member
States are currently contributing much less than this. This achievement
embarrassed the United States, because it realised that its contribution
is very small indeed. The
European Union gives USD 25 billion: it is the largest donor in the world.
The United States gives USD 10 billion. This is a very small sum when you
think that the United States has given its military establishment USD 100
billion since September last year, and that is why President Bush promised
a further USD 5 billion in development finance by 2006. That would bring
the US contribution up to USD 15 billion, which is still very low indeed
when you think that people like Bill Gates give USD 1 billion as personal
donations. Because
Mr Fischler is here, I would like to say that EU agricultural subsidies
are killing the poor farmers in the Third World. He knows this and I know
he is in favour of persuading Member States to do something about the food
mountains that we create. This was widely discussed in Monterrey with the
International Fund for Agricultural Development. I and my colleagues met
with the President of IFAD. It was made very clear that unless we invest
this development finance in the rural economies of poor countries and
boost their agricultural production, we will have a breeding ground for
deprivation, terrorism and internal conflicts. This is because these are
the people, the majority of them living in rural areas, who are too poor
to grow their own food and too poor to buy the EU's surplus food. I
would like to make one other point about HIV, AIDS, TB and malaria. The
Monterrey conference did not discuss these issues at great length, and did
not commit itself to allocating funding to them in a special category.
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