President. – The next item is the Commission communication on the mission by Commissioner Patten to Serbia.

  Patten, Commission. – As one or two honourable Members may know, I had been due to attend, alongside Javier Solana and Bodo Hombach of the Stability Pact, the special summit of south-east European leaders in Skopje today, which has been organised by President Trajkovski to welcome Yugoslavia back into the family of south-east European nations. But I told President Trajkovski that much as I would have liked to have attended, I needed to be here in this Parliament today, demonstrating democratic accountability in action. I have had several debates and it has been a pleasure to take part in them. But I am pleased to be able to report back to the House on my visit to Yugoslavia yesterday and on Monday. Like many honourable Members, I had long hoped for the chance to report on such a visit and on our efforts to build ties with a democratic Belgrade. Many of us have been surprised and inspired by the triumphant return of democracy to Serbia in recent weeks. I guess we should not have been surprised that democracy always wins in the end.

The European Union made abundantly clear before the elections which took place just a month ago today that democratic change in Yugoslavia would mean a radical shift in the European Union's policy towards that country. What a difference a month can make. In the summer I reported to this House about a Serbia that was an outcast among European nations, about the repression of the brave, independent media, about our support for the opposition. Today, although it is early days, the opposition are in government and the independent media suddenly find that they are no longer embattled and alone but in the vanguard of a new effort to create a truly open and pluralistic media for the whole country.

From the moment the people of Serbia made their democratic will clear and from the moment they insisted it should be respected, the European Union has been as good as its word. Barely four days after the democratic transition on 5 October, European Union foreign ministers announced the lifting of sanctions and the immediate repeal of the oil embargo and the flight ban. They announced the extension of the European Reconstruction Agency to Serbia and Montenegro. They underlined our willingness to press ahead with clearing the Danube and to provide the resources to do so. They asked the Commission to draw up proposals to extend our recently announced trade preferences for the Balkans to the whole of Yugoslavia. They expressed a wish for Member States to re-establish or normalise diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia at the earliest opportunity. They underlined the willingness of the European Union to contribute to the institutional and economic rebuilding of the FRY and they extended an invitation to President Kostunica to attend the informal European Council in Biarritz and to participate in the regional summit that the Presidency is organising and which is to be hosted by the Croatian Government in Zagreb on 24 November.

The day after the foreign ministers' meeting, Foreign Minister Védrine representing the presidency, flew to Belgrade to inform President Kostunica in person of the measures decided by the European Union to honour the promises it had made to the people of Serbia during the election campaign. The same day, just five days after 5 October, a team of Commission officials arrived in Belgrade to discuss with President Kostunica's advisers an urgent, short-term assistance package.

Later that week, the European Commission proposed to the European Council at Biarritz that the budgetary authority, including this Parliament, should approve an emergency package of assistance to Serbia worth EUR 200 million, 180 million of it mobilised from the emergency reserve. In the last few days, a team from our Reconstruction Agency has been in Belgrade, working out in close partnership with President Kostunica's team, and in particular with Professor Labus and the G17 group of economists, as well as with other donors, precisely what assistance we can deliver and how we can ensure it arrives on the ground in Serbia as rapidly as possible in the next few weeks, given the onset of winter and given the upcoming Serbian Republic elections on 23 December.

Following these initial missions I went myself to Belgrade on Monday and yesterday afternoon I visited Podgorica. In Belgrade I met President Kostunica and held a separate meeting with him and some 80 mayors from democratic municipalities. I visited the headquarters of the students' resistance movement, and met the brave independent journalist, Marislav Filipovic, jailed by Milosevic for telling the truth and recently freed under President Kostunica. I met with Professor Labus and his colleagues of the G17 group of economists and with colleagues from the World Bank to discuss both short-term help and the longer but vital task of long-term reconstruction, especially institution building and building the rule of law.

I met the Mayor of Belgrade and visited with him a Belgrade school being renovated under the European Commission's Schools for Democracy programme.

I visited the Independent Media Centre, a kind of haven for independent journalists which the European Commission has helped to support; and gave an interview. I also visited the studio of the independent television and radio station, B92, which was harassed by Milosevic and supported amongst others by the European Commission and whose journalists, like other independent journalists, will deserve prominent and flattering mention when the history of the last few weeks in Serbia comes to be written. They were infinitely braver than I have ever had to be.

I also had important meetings with representatives of the democratic opposition of Serbia and with NGOs and representatives of civil society, including the impressive head of the Civic Democratic Alliance, Goran Svilanovic. I briefed European Union heads of mission before my departure to Montenegro where I had meetings yesterday evening with President Djukanovic and Prime Minister Vujanovic.

Let me just say a word about my meeting with President Kostunica and the emergency assistance package that we are finalising for Serbia. I set out for President Kostunica our determination to provide assistance to Serbia as rapidly as possible. I was impressed by his commitment to democracy and made very much aware of the huge challenge he faces in consolidating democracy in Serbia, especially in the run-up to the Serbian elections. I made clear to him our willingness to be as helpful as possible. I applauded the approach he had taken at Biarritz and during his recent visit to Sarajevo, in particular his willingness to establish diplomatic relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina without delay. Others will have seen the comments he made during a recent CBS interview.

It seems to me that President Kostunica has made an impressive start in formidably difficult circumstances that few of us predicted a few months ago. He deserves a certain amount of political elbow-room, as he tackles those problems and consolidates his position, and all the practical support we can muster.

That is why we have moved fast to put together a large-scale emergency assistance programme for Serbia. Our priorities which have been drawn up, following close consultation with democratic leaders in Belgrade, are to provide help, above all, with energy supplies as well as with medicines and possibly with food. As part of the same package we will extend country-wide our highly successful Schools for Democracy programme which for some months now has been providing basic improvements to schools in municipalities which were run by the opposition. Now we will do that Serbia-wide.

We are going to launch a new programme called Towns for Democracy to provide basic municipal improvements and services and we are going to reinforce our support for the media and civil society in this critical phase.

It is clear that Serbia faces a formidably difficult winter, especially on the energy front. We are going to do everything we can to alleviate the problems but it will still be tough because Milosevic has left Serbia's new leaders with a spectacular shambles.

On energy we are looking urgently to extend our Energy for Democracy programme across Serbia. In particular we are envisaging shipping in diesel and heating fuel, both to keep the power plants running and to fuel district heating plants. We will operate mainly through the municipalities, as we did last year under our pioneering Energy for Democracy initiative.

I had an extremely useful meeting with President Kostunica and many of the mayors to discuss priorities.

I hope I have made it clear what a formidable task we face. We will have to work with others and, despite our efforts, Serbia faces a difficult period. But we are working flat out to get our help on the ground as rapidly as possible, which means from the second half of November.

The people of Serbia know that, from now on, they do not have to face the future alone but with the staunch support of the European Union and the entire family of European democracies at their side.

It was clear from my meetings with the mayors and others that expectations of the European Union are very high. We must not disappoint them. I hope there will be rapid agreement in the Commission and in the management committee on the programmes we have in mind so that deliveries can indeed start in the second half of November.

The people of Serbia will not understand if bureaucracy stands in their way and nor will I. We simply must get moving very fast indeed. Let me make a further very important point: none of the assistance that I have described is at the expense of our efforts elsewhere in the region. I and, I believe, ministers in the General Affairs Council are acutely aware of the European Union's obligations to Croatia, to Bosnia-Herzegovina, to Albania, to FYROM and to the people of Kosovo and to Montenegro. We are not going to relax our efforts elsewhere in the region. If anything, we are going to redouble them.

That was one reason why I visited Podgorica yesterday, my third visit since March and the first time I was able to fly in with a visa from Belgrade. I discussed our considerable assistance programme with President Djukanovic. We have given EUR 55 million to Montenegro this year in recognition of the pressure that Montenegro was under from the Milosevic regime and the brave democratic path that it has taken in the last three years. I informed the president and prime minister of our plans to extend the activities of the European Reconstruction Agency to Montenegro and I informed them, in the light of the welcome democratic change in Belgrade about our proposals to extend the full benefits of our recently implemented asymmetric trade measures for the region to Montenegro as well as to Serbia. This will be a big boost to Montenegro's economy.

I listened to the views of the prime minister and the president on recent developments and on relations between Montenegro and Serbia. I made clear to them and to the press that I had been impressed by President Kostunica's commitment to democracy and the formidable challenge he faced in consolidating it. The European Union was determined to do all it could to help, which was why we were putting together a substantial emergency package for this winter.

Speaking as a friend of Montenegro, I said that when elected democratic leaders held out the hand of friendship it was very important to grasp it. I underlined my view that with Milosevic gone, remaining problems should be resolved through a process of rational and calm dialogue displaying understanding of others' points of view, a certain generosity of spirit and a degree of patience. (These are attributes that have not always been widely available in the region in the last decade – I understate the point.) Now a new generation of leaders was in power who want to do things differently, I concluded.

Let me just finish today by saying that this year began with democratic change in Zagreb and this autumn we have seen much hoped-for democratic change take root in Belgrade. There is still much to do. Democracy, although I believe it to be irreversible, is still young and fragile in Serbia. What we have now before us is the best prospect for a generation of building lasting peace and prosperity across the whole of south-east Europe – the chance truly to draw a line under the traumas of the recent past and to look to the future, a future in Europe.

The European Union is ready for that task and stands ready to do all in its power to deliver on the hopes of so many whose lives have been blighted by the horrors the Milosevic regime inflicted inside and outside the borders of Serbia. It is an enormous challenge, but this is the challenge for which all of us have been working for so long. Now we have a duty to rise to it.

  Lagendijk (Verts/ALE). – (NL) Mr President, let me start by thanking the Commissioner for his swift visit to Belgrade and for reporting back to us so promptly. Normally speaking, I believe that that is one of the tasks of the Commissioners and I would not comment on it under normal circumstances. But I would like to make an exception and say that I appreciate the fact that he is here today.

Last time we talked about Serbia, I urged MEPs to exercise some patience with Mr Kostunica because I had the impression that there had been progress almost every day, and I believe we can see evidence of this progress, up to and including yesterday when Mr Kostunica declared himself willing to assume responsibility, which I believe is crucial, for the Serbian crimes in Kosovo.

I specifically have three questions for the Commissioner. Did he and Mr Kostunica discuss the position of the Kosovar refugees? As you know, there are still approximately two thousand people in Serbian prisons without any charge. Rumour has it that this situation will soon change. I was interested to hear if he had any further information on this.

My second question relates to Kosovo. I share his view on what he said here about Montenegro, but the biggest problem is, of course, what to do with Kosovo.

My final question is about the money. I welcome the emergency aid. Is the Commissioner convinced that the maximum sum of 250 million, which is earmarked for next year, will be enough to provide Serbia with structural aid?

  Pack (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, Commissioner, I am grateful for your comments, and support everything you have said. I would have said it in a similar way, except that I express myself differently. I had the same experience when I was in Serbia a fortnight ago with Mr Swoboda. Although we were not there before Mr Hombach, we did go there, because we have the funds to help people there. Mr Hombach only went there to make his presence felt and to establish what it might be possible to do.

We know what can be done and we are in a position to make the funding available tomorrow, which I am very pleased about. I am also sure that under your auspices, Commissioner, emergency aid really will be provided swiftly. This is an opportunity for the Commission to demonstrate that it does not deserve its reputation.

I have two questions. First, Mr Modrow alleged yesterday evening that everything we are doing there amounts to reparation for the NATO bombing. I told him that was nonsense. 90% of the damage that we are making good there is the result of socialist and communist mismanagement. I would be grateful if you would confirm this point. Secondly, when we were down there two weeks ago, we were told that the sanctions were being lifted, but they have not been lifted. Where do things stand on trade sanctions? Have you resolved that issue? Companies need to be able to do business now. You can put Milosevic's entourage on a blacklist, but you should open things up for everyone else!

  Volcic (PSE). – (IT) Mr President, Commissioner, the dramatic apology of the Yugoslavian President, Mr Kostunica, also referred to by my fellow Member, his admission of guilt and the guilt of the Serbian people – something which many nations have never done – is a gesture which does him credit and which will make an important contribution to improving the climate in the region. Politically, Mr Kostunica is associating himself with the decisions of the international community which considers that Kosovo is still part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and, at the same time, is lowering the hopes of the Albanians of Kosovo of achieving a state of independence. What kind of tension – a tension which naturally seems paradoxical to us, even with the return of some of the Serbian refugees – could be generated by this lack of self-determination so longed for by the Albanians? In your opinion, Commissioner, on the basis of your conversations with him, to what extent is the moderate Mr Rugova likely to be willing to agree to enter into dialogue with his democratic counterpart in Belgrade?

  Patten, Commission. – I am sure that the honourable Member was right to say that we must show some patience about developments in Belgrade, in Yugoslavia, over the coming weeks as democracy is consolidated. It does not mean that we abandon or surrender our principles or our values. We cannot do that. But we need to ensure that Mr Kostunica has time to develop and strengthen the democratic base of his government. Everyone wants to see him succeed in the formidable task he has taken on, and so far it has to be said that everything he has done and everything he has said has pointed in the same democratic direction. He has set up an amnesty commission to deal with the issue of prisoners, though some have already been released, one or two of whose cases have been brought to all our attention here, but as I said to the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Vienna a week ago, the issue of the Albanian prisoners is going to be one which he will have to look at as a matter of some urgency.

On Kosovo, as two honourable Members have mentioned, my position begins and ends with Security Council Resolution 1244. I note the imaginative leaps of others. I am not sure they are always very judicious or wise, but as far as I am concerned Resolution 1244 is where the policy rests.

The EUR 200 million emergency package will partly be in structural assistance but I set out in my remarks the sort of direction in which we would be seeking to spend it and given that the bulk of it comes from the "Emergencies in third countries" line in the overall budget, we are not having to take money from other countries in the region, or from other regions, in order to provide this assistance.

The honourable lady who knows so much about south-east Europe and who has been pressing for more sensible and effective policies in south-east Europe for months, and indeed for years, referred to the importance of us ensuring that we can deliver relief quickly and realistically. I am quite struck by some of the rather unrealistic promises that people make in Serbia. I would love to be able to clear the Danube in a couple of weeks time but it is not possible. One or two people have suggested that perhaps things could be done a little more quickly and perhaps we should take that as encouragement to speed up and deliver as rapidly as possible.

I should like to make one very important substantive point. We are talking about emergency assistance and while that emergency assistance is being delivered we will, with the World Bank, be conducting an assessment mission of longer term needs. While that is going on we will be, I hope, assisting Yugoslavia in dealing with the problems about its membership of the UN, its membership of the World Bank and its problems with the IFIs to which it owes considerable arrears. I hope we will be able to deal with those problems and have completed the needs assessment by the middle of next year.

It would be absolutely crazy to have a donors' pledging conference before we have those things in place. There is no point in having a donors' pledging conference before we can get a lot of money pledged. To get into a situation where we were not able to call on loan capital but were depending entirely on grants, for example, would means that any donors' pledging conference would go off at half cock. So I hope that we can keep that sensible speed of progress in mind.

As for what the relief will go for, I dare say some reconstruction will be necessary after the Nato air strikes. But as people said at the time, we see in Belgrade that however tragic the loss of life, these were very surgically carried out on the whole. But the main repair work that has to be done is the repair work that is necessary because of years of communism and because of years of xenophobic nationalism. That is where most of the reconstruction is required: to bring the economy into the 21st century and to make it competitive in a Europe of open borders and open markets. That is going to be a considerable task but since there are so many capable and able Serbs helping in the economies of Australia, Canada, Germany and other places around the world, all of us can look forward to the day when Serbs are able to do a great deal more to make their own economy in Serbia prosperous and successful. We want to help them with that.

On sanctions, we have lifted – as the House will know – the sanctions on oil and air flights. We are discussing with Yugoslav officials exactly what to do about the financial sanctions. Speaking for myself, although it will be a decision that the General Affairs Council will have to make very speedily, I am always reluctant to be more catholic than the Pope or – to use a more appropriate expression – more orthodox than the Patriarch: if we are told by the authorities in Belgrade that they want to get rid of the financial sanctions it would be slightly surprising if we were to say "steady on, we think we can design some smart sanctions which will meet needs which you say you are quite content for us to forget about". I will be reporting in that sense, in due course, to the General Affairs Council.

  McMillan-Scott (PPE-DE). – This time last year I visited Belgrade, a rather bleak city, veering from despair to hope on a daily basis. I went to see the NGOs working in humanitarian and free media fields, financed by the European Union, and the picture was not a particularly happy one. The aspiration was there but the actuality was not. The promise was there but the performance was not, because the money was not coming through and there was an administrative bungle.

I want to ask the Commissioner if he will confirm that he will thank the staff of the Commission both in Brussels, and in particular in the Belgrade office under Michael Graham, the head of the delegation, who throughout this time have gone through enormous change and have actually wrought a major difference in the process of moving towards democracy. Despite the difficulties, they have achieved something rather remarkable. I would like the Commissioner to confirm that he will thank not only those people but also the NGOs working in the field. More particularly I hope he will accept the thanks of this House, because he has demonstrated that democratic activism not only works in Hong Kong but also in Serbia.

IN THE CHAIR: MR WIEBENGA
Vice-President

  Ludford (ELDR). – I would also like to thank the Commissioner for his efforts and I hope I can without being pretentious assure him that the relatively low attendance in this House does not, I am sure, reflect the level of interest in this subject. I think, just as an aside, there is something weird about the procedures of this House that we spend an hour and a half voting at lunchtime but for such an important topic we do not enable people to be here in the numbers that would reflect the interest.

I wanted to ask him about regional cooperation. Is he, and we as the European Union, making progress in convincing the players in the region that when we encourage them to have regional cooperation, this is not a diversion from a move towards Europe and to eventual membership of the European Union, assuming all the criteria will be met with no deadlines and timescales, but a step towards eventual EU membership?

  Piétrasanta (Verts/ALE). – (FR) Mr President, what I have to say relates to Kosovo because it was the Commission communication on Kosovo that you were supposed to talk about today, which somehow got transformed into a communication on Serbia. I understand this, given that there is a new leader, President Kostunica, and that it is necessary to be involved in the process with him so that things can go ahead properly.

Last week, I was in Pristina. I met a lot of people and, in particular, I met Bernard Kouchner for a working session. I also saw the enormous problems that exist there. You spoke about the Danube, but it is simply not enough to carry out studies. Urgent action must be taken because the Danube is being polluted by stockpiles of sulphuric acid and from sources in Mitrovica. There needs to be a risk control plan not only for this region, but also for the town of Pristina and for other towns in Kosovo. Whole populations live in destitution. Attacks with enriched uranium warheads have polluted the town of Pristina and the other areas that were hit. The destruction of the sports stadium released asbestos into the air, which spread throughout the town. There is a very serious health problem.

I would therefore like to draw your attention to this and to tell you that there is a social problem. This aid must go on social concerns, the widows and orphans and so on. Urgent measures need to be taken. I must insist on this.

  Patten, Commission. – I am grateful to my honourable friend for what he said about Michael Graham and his staff in Belgrade. They have done an excellent job. I was delighted to be able to thank some of them, though on my next visit I hope to be able to thank all of them, and I will certainly refer to the honourable gentleman's handsome tribute. As far as the NGOs are concerned, they have done magnificently.

The organisations in the media field have done magnificently. We were superbly well-served by the Swedish-Helsinki Committee, for example, but there has been excellent cooperation and despite all the difficulties put in our way by Milosevic's regime, we were able to get a considerable amount of help through to the democrats and the democratic forces in Serbia. That I hope played a small part in bringing about change.

The honourable lady was entirely right to say that it is sometimes suspected that encouraging regional cooperation is a sort of Brussels stalling on the route towards Europe. We have to explain to people that what we are trying to see happen in south-east Europe is what we know has worked for us. The European Union is the best example in the world of countries dealing with ancient animosities, countries becoming both more politically stable and more prosperous by knocking down frontiers, by knocking down boundaries and in certain areas pooling their sovereignty and doing things together that they do better together.

That is what we are trying to encourage the countries of south-east Europe to do. For example, we are saying to them, we will give you very generous trade access to our markets but you have to give generous trade access to your neighbours' markets as well. That is at the heart of the stabilisation and association process which is gradually and successfully moving forward. On the Danube and environmental and health problems, I agree with what the honourable gentleman has said.

President Kostunica said at the meeting with mayors, that in the new democratic era Yugoslavia was going to have to do quite a bit about gender mainstreaming because they were only I think three women in the room at that meeting. But one of the women mayors present at the meeting raised specifically the question of the environmental and health hazards caused over last year and we will need to look at problems like that because they pose a serious health hazard to many people in south-east Europe.

  President. – Thank you, Commissioner.

The debate is closed.