The European Parliament,

-  having regard to the White Paper on reforming the Commission (COM(2000) 200 ),

-  having regard to the Commission communications of 24 April 2000 (COM(2000) 212 ) on the European Community's development policy and of 16 May 2000 (SEC(2000) 814 ) on the reform of the management of external aid,

-  having regard to the Commission proposal of 26 July 2000 on a new Financial Regulation (COM(2000) 461 ),

-  recalling its resolutions of 21 September 2000 on complementarity between Community and Member State policies on development cooperation(1) and of 17 February 2000 on the coherence of the various Union policies(2) ,

-  recalling its resolution of 19 January 2000 on the action to be taken on the second report of the Committee of Independent Experts on the reform of the Commission(3) and its resolutions of 6 July 2000 containing its comments accompanying its decisions giving discharge to the Commission, firstly in respect of the sixth, seventh and eighth European Development Funds for the 1998 financial year(4) and secondly in respect of implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the 1998 financial year(5) ,

-  having regard to the objectives of Title XX, Article 177 of the EC Treaty,

-  having regard to Rule 163 of its Rules of Procedure,

-  having regard to the report of the Committee on Development and Cooperation (A5-0337/2000 ),

A.  referring to the various Council resolutions on complementarity and coherence between the European Community's development policy and the other Community policies, and in particular the General Affairs Council's conclusions of 9 October 2000 on the effectiveness of the Union's external action,

B.  whereas development policy objectives are one of the three fundamental pillars of the Union's external action, equal to common foreign and security policy and commercial policy objectives,

C.  whereas international development aid policy is the greatest expression of the European Community's external dimension,

D.  whereas the industrialised countries' public development aid has gradually fallen to a minimum of 0.22% of overall GDP, far below the objective of 0.7% recommended in the UN resolution of 1974 on the new international economic order,

E.  whereas the conclusions of the General Affairs Council of 9 October 2000 do not refer to the Council declaration on EU development policy, and include no reference as such to the role of poverty eradication or the international development targets,

F.  whereas a thorough reform of the Community international aid policy is needed in order to improve its effectiveness,

G.  whereas this reform must be focused on:

H.  whereas the Commission is the number one donor of humanitarian aid in the world and directly administers a substantial proportion of world development aid, but the relative growth in the volume of funding allocated to aid has not been accompanied by appropriate adjustments in human resources and management methods,

I.  whereas the volume of funding assigned by the EU to development aid is not matched by a proportionate influence on the international stage,

J.  regretting the fact that the Commission, owing to staff shortages, has so far concentrated on the implementation of policies and instruments, so that planning has mainly been carried out by other international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the OECD,

K.  whereas, furthermore, the Commission's great experience in implementing development policy has been analysed and used to only a limited extent,

L.  bearing in mind the outcome of the external assessments of the Community's aid policies which highlighted problems affecting the speed and effectiveness of the implementation of programmes and projects,

M.  stressing that the support of the European Parliament and the Member States is essential in order to solve many of the problems affecting the management of Community development aid, in particular budgetary issues and the procedures for Council intervention,

1.  Points out that the commitments entered into by the international community in order to achieve quantified sustainable development objectives and, in particular, to eradicate poverty constitute a new focus for development to which Community development policy must contribute;

2.  Calls on the Commission to base its reform vis-à-vis external action on a clear and comprehensive declaration which sets out the EU's aims for external relations for the 21st century and makes poverty eradication the overarching objective of such a declaration;

3.  Notes with satisfaction that the Commission has initiated a process of reforming the RELEX Group, which must undertake to improve the impact of development aid and increase the effectiveness of its relations with developing countries in the light of its latest objective - to promote sustainable development in order to foster the eradication of poverty and the integration of these countries in the world economy;

4.  Expresses, however, its fear that a separation between political responsibility and strategic programming of the implementation and monitoring of programmes may result in the marginalisation of development policy within the Commission; considers that political responsibilities must be reflected in the institution's structures;

5.  Takes the view, in this context, that an integrated Community International Development Department should be made responsible for the whole cooperation cycle for the benefit of developing countries, covering the programmes for Africa, Latin America, the Mediterranean countries and Asia;

6.  Considers it essential to solve the structural problem of the lack of human resources needed to manage development cooperation funds, and hence undertakes to allocate the relevant resources by means of the budgetary exercise;

7.  Points out that small-scale projects have traditionally received the best scores in evaluations of EU aid performance; requests, accordingly, that such projects should in the future receive adequate staffing in order to be maintained and their number even be enlarged;

8.  Calls on the Council, as one arm of the budgetary authority, to ensure that the financial provisions reflect the objectives of the Community's development policy;

9.  Calls on the budgetary authority, in the coming financial years, to make provision for transferring a specific percentage for administrative expenditure to each operational budget line for development cooperation;

10.  Considers it decisive that the Commission should, in the context of development policy, have sufficient and appropriately trained staff to ensure that the functions of reflection, analysis and making proposals can be carried out;

11.  Calls on the Commission to submit to Parliament, during the first half of 2001, a report on the implementation of the various elements of the reform of RELEX;

12.  Considers that the transfer of powers to the delegations constitutes an opportunity to create a system for on-the-spot management of development projects and appropriation and reinforcement of local capacity; is therefore in favour of rapid decentralisation to the benefit of the delegations, giving them the necessary IT infrastructure and boosting the human resources devoted to development policy; is also in favour of projects and programmes being taken over by beneficiaries, including the contracting of local agents, where conditions of good governance and democracy prevail;

13.  Stresses the need for more specialised staff at the RELEX DGs in order to create specialists, in particular programming experts and sectoral experts;

14.  Considers that the creation of the Common Service for External Relations (SCR) constituted a failed attempt to rationalise the administration of Community aid and that the unclear distribution of responsibilities between various departments reduced its effectiveness; in this context highlights the need to integrate the whole cooperation cycle and is in favour of responsibility for the whole development cooperation cycle being assigned to one and the same body, with one Commissioner having political responsibility for it, namely the Commissioner responsible for development policy; believes that this would improve the efficiency of the Commission administration as well as the visibility of the Commission's action in this field, without affecting the distribution of responsibilities between Commissioners;

15.  Upholds the specific identity of Community development policy and its added value, and strongly deplores the view, prevailing in a number of Member States, that development aid should be renationalised; believes strongly that the development policies of Member States should be complementary to and should not attempt to replace or duplicate Community development policy; in view of the importance which it attributes to public Community-level policy in the development sphere, also advocates that all programme management be concentrated in the Commission and the delegation of such activities to external agencies strictly limited;

16.  Notes the plan to set up a new Community aid management body based on the SCR transformed into an Office, and considers that it must take a form compatible with the aims of greater effectiveness of Community aid; the form it takes must in any event ensure the unity of Community action and ensure that the Commission can control the body; to this extent the EP will maintain political control over its activities;

17.  Considers, also, that the creation of this body must entail the simplification of management procedures, in particular as regards the cofinancing of projects with NGOs;

18.  Expresses the conviction that the NGOs have the ability to implement programmes specifically targeted at combating poverty, and considers that the Commission must make greater use of this potential;

19.  Considers that the EU should develop strategies to promote vibrant and strong civil societies in recipient countries; that the EU should seek to collaborate with civil society sectors, including NGOs and the private sector, in all areas of external cooperation, to realise development objectives, and that civil society organisations should be considered essential and independent partners of the EU who play a significant role in the development process; the EU should encourage greater policy dialogue with civil society and greater collaboration at a programme level;

20.  Stresses the importance of a proper assessment of the impact of external aid programmes, so that the positive and negative lessons may have a bearing on the planning and implementation of subsequent measures; stresses the need to train staff specialised in this field and to give the evaluation unit the staff and powers needed to ensure that its work improves the impact and effectiveness of development aid policy;

21.  With regard to comitology, agrees with the Commission that the role of the Council's working groups and committees needs to evolve so as to concentrate on political guidelines, the periodic revision of the strategies of each of the countries, sectoral strategies and issues requiring European coordination prior to international deliberations;

22.  Welcomes the Commission's initiative to review all the regulations concerning development policy in order to study the feasibility of introducing a horizontal regulation making it possible to concentrate the work of the committees at the programming stage and to eliminate the systematic revision of all projects;

23.  Highlights the importance of 'country strategy papers' and NIPs (National Indicative Programmes) as an instrument for promoting both complementarity with the Member States and the participation of beneficiaries in the programming of cooperation by means of dialogue and the transmission of information, thus moving towards the idea of handing over development projects to the beneficiaries where appropriate conditions obtain;

24.  Stresses the need to step up the presence of the EU in fora where key issues for developing economies are debated and to improve the coordination of the positions of the Member States and the EU in the various international fora, especially the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN, where the EU's political role should be commensurate with the level of its contributions;

25.  Reiterates the importance of forwarding information to the EP before policies are adopted and, in any event, at the same time as it is forwarded to the Council, with regard to Community aid policy guidelines, forecasts and programming, without this meaning that the EP should interfere with the Commission's management role;

26.  Considers that an effort should be made in the new structure to ensure coherence between the Community's external, development, commercial, agricultural, fisheries, research and development and food safety and hygiene policies; considers that coherence impact assessments should be made in the formulation of all new policies and practices, in addition to the publication of the annual report, to be scrutinised by both the Council and Parliament, in line with its abovementioned resolution of 17 February 2000 on the coherence of the various Union policies;

27.  Stresses that the RELEX reform process must be carried out in an open and transparent way, with the participation of the staff of the departments involved in the reform process and paying particular attention to preserving, throughout the transitional period, the objectives of an effective European development policy, as well as the commitments entered into with the beneficiary countries;

28.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.

(1) Texts Adopted, Item 15. (2) Texts Adopted, Item 7. (3) OJ C 304, 24.10.2000, p. 135. (4) Texts Adopted, Item 6. (5) Texts Adopted, Item 5.