Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 28 September 2006 - Strasbourg

5. Towards more and better EU Aid: the 2006 aid effectiveness package (debate)

  President. – The next item is the report by Mr Hutchinson, on behalf of the Committee on Development, on ‘more and better cooperation: the 2006 EU aid effectiveness package’ (2006/2208 (INI)) (A6-0270/2006).

  Alain Hutchinson (PSE), rapporteur. – (FR) Mr President, Commissioner, the report I hope we are going to vote in favour of today follows directly on from the three Commission communications that constitute what is referred to as ‘the 2006 aid effectiveness package’ and the report is therefore more broadly about pursuing the objective of improving European development cooperation. So much for the context.

As for what is at stake here – or even, I might say, constitutes the challenge – this could not be clearer: how are we Europeans significantly to improve the actual aid we provide to the countries of the South? In other words, how are we to set about ensuring that the aid we grant to the countries of the South is converted much more systematically into practical progress such as will genuinely change the lives of millions of people living in humanly unacceptable conditions?

There is now a collective awareness of the fact that we could provide better aid, and political commitments have been made enabling us to give this issue priority status in our development cooperation policy. We have a European consensus on development and also a new strategy for Africa. That is excellent. Moreover, the legislative and technical arrangements are being put in place. If I may say so, all that remains for us to do is to give practical expression to all this.

The many issues that we have dealt with in this report include the following: the actual definition of development cooperation and, therefore, of what each Member State is legitimately entitled to include under public development aid; the minimum level of aid to be obtained if our commitments are to be honoured; the untying of aid, a process that Member States – a number of them, in any case – are clearly reluctant to apply; the absence of indicators enabling real progress in improving European aid to be assessed; or, again, the concern of actors on the ground who note a certain reluctance to involve beneficiary countries in the strategies and programmes intended for those countries.

In addition to these specific issues that give us some grasp of how far we still have to go in improving our aid in practical terms, the three Cs – complementarity of actions, coordination of programmes and coherence of policies - also constitute a framework within which to work and a particularly important template for interpreting the action that we shall have to take over the next few years where cooperation is concerned.

When it comes to complementarity of actions, whether these be taken on a sectoral or geographical basis, the fact is that distribution of the work gives rise to some resistance and a number of difficulties. By adopting an open and bold approach, we should be able to overcome these problems. The debate cannot be reduced to a clash between Member State protectionism and Brussels centralism, useful though it undoubtedly is to guard against excessive centralism. This is characterised by a top-down approach to programming and, in particular, by reduced participation by the partner countries and by civil society in defining strategies and priorities.

The fact remains that centralised coordination between Member States and the Commission would offer undoubted advantages and would, in particular, make it possible to avoid the present situation in which a multitude of different actors do the same thing in the same country or region. For example, the atlas of donors clearly shows the existence of forgotten crises or of what are known as orphan countries, together with post-tsunami-type situations in which the beneficiary countries are incapable of absorbing a huge quantity of aid provided on a one-off basis.

Although coordination has been talked about for years, huge challenges remain when it comes to harmonising procedures and doing a better job of coordinating the EU’s various cooperation programmes. What is more, not only do the various Community policies themselves need to be internally coherent, but there also needs to be a coherent approach to policy-making in the various geographical areas in which our development policy applies. This precise point appears on the agenda of the Finnish Presidency, which has decided to devote a large part of its work to the matter.

If, therefore, we thought it wiser to confine ourselves in our report to emphasising the importance of this aspect while waiting to see what the near future holds for us, I should like to take this opportunity to raise this issue which I think is vital and ultimately has bearing on the very basis of any cooperative initiative or even, indeed, of any political project.

As we know - because it is regularly talked about - boats continue, every day and even as we talk, to reach the Spanish coasts – which is to say our own coasts - with hundreds of people on board attempting to flee a fate that they have decided to reject at peril of their lives. This situation obviously raises issues about border controls, the management of migratory flows and policy on integrating immigrant populations. In addition, it strikingly raises the issue of how effective our cooperation policy is, as well as the issue of how well that policy ties in with our other policies.

I do not wish to descend into caricature, but what kind of cooperation is it – and one lasting more than 40 years – at the end of which the populations that we were claiming to help have only one aspiration: to flee the conditions under which they live at any price? Let us not mince our words. To me, this situation sounds like failure. What, indeed, can the countries of the South make of a cooperation policy through which a sum of EUR 50 billion per year is granted when it is combined with a policy requiring them to honour a debt whose annual reimbursement represents four times that sum?

How can we continue to state in every possible way our determination to facilitate the development of the countries of the South while, at the same time, we continue to foist on them the free-trade rules that they are incapable of obeying under the conditions we impose on them? How can we agree to combating poverty when, at the same time, nothing is done to fight against the structural causes of that poverty?

The truth is that, however effective it might be, development cooperation policy will never by itself succeed in responding to the many challenges posed in the countries of the South. It is with precisely that thought in mind that there is a need to improve development cooperation, as such cooperation will be more effective in proportion to the degree to which it succeeds in making Europe aware of the need to conduct an overall policy focused entirely on the pursuit of a common priority objective: the emergence of a fairer world characterised by greater solidarity.

  Charlie McCreevy, Member of the Commission. Mr President, I speak on behalf of my colleague, Mr Michel, who is unable to be here this morning. I wish to begin by expressing my thanks to the rapporteur, Mr Hutchinson, and the Committee on Development for a constructive report on aid effectiveness, a topic of key importance for the EU development policy.

Improving both the quantity and the quality of our aid is certainly one of the core commitments set out in the European Consensus for Development, the latter having been endorsed by all Member States, the Commission and Parliament in 2005. The Consensus is a crucial document for all of us. First, it opens a new dimension for joint work between the 25 Member States and the Commission. Secondly, it highlights, for the first time in EU history, our collective European vision, principles and objectives that govern our development policy. Thirdly, it sets out the comparative advantage of the Commission and the objective of redeploying Member States’ activities in order to achieve better and highly necessary synergy.

As demonstrated during all the debates on the European Consensus, the Commission should promote the impact of Europe in development and push the European aid effectiveness agenda. The European Union must be a leading force in international fora dealing with aid effectiveness, in particular in the OECD/DAC, where the Commission enjoys full statutory membership. A strong EU makes for a strong DAC.

It is with this in mind that Commissioner Michel has proposed a package of concrete deliverables on aid effectiveness, which were endorsed by the Council in spring 2006. The Commission’s approach to aid effectiveness is based on lessons learnt from the field, good practices and expectations from the partner countries. It is rooted in the principles of harmonisation, ownership, alignment and management by results, as in the Paris Declaration.

Parliament has made it clear in previous resolutions and again in this report that it supports the Commission in its efforts to strengthen the coordination and coherence of both Commission and EU actions in the development field. The report highlights three important areas in which progress needs to be achieved in 2007 and I would like to comment on them briefly.

First, strengthening complementarity and the division of labour: these issues are crucial for the Commission. The EU Donor Atlas has indeed underlined the gaps and duplications in donor activities which hamper the impact of aid. In order to address these weaknesses, the Commission launched a process with Member States aimed at adopting operational principles for a better division of labour between EU donors. Discussions are currently ongoing and this initiative should be rendered operational with Council conclusions in 2007.

Second, the joint programming of aid: the EU now has at its disposal a joint framework adopted last spring. This framework foresees the drawing-up of common diagnostics and analysis in partner countries, in close partnership with Member States involved, to establish common operational solutions. Partner countries and civil society play a major and active role in this process. Far from being excluded from these discussions, civil society is strongly involved in the country diagnostic set up in order to ensure its full ownership. This approach is fully in line with the approach used in EC programming.

Thirdly, a few words on an essential tool for improving the division of labour and coordination, that is, cofinancing. In 2007, the Commission will bring forward specific proposals on how to strengthen the use of cofinancing as a tool to support the division of labour amongst donors, as well as to assist those Member States building their development capacities. Parliament has been persistent in its well-founded requests to the Commission to ensure coordination among Member States in order to strengthen the effectiveness of financing for development. As you can see, the Commission has clearly adopted a proactive attitude and will, in close collaboration with Member States, use all tools at its disposal to make greater aid effectiveness a reality. I can only advocate that the European Parliament uses the joint meeting on development with the national parliaments next October as an opportunity to expand support for these initiatives.

Indeed, it is important for the EU to ensure that its political ambitions match its financial status as the largest global donor. In this respect, Parliament has a crucial role to play in helping Member States to accelerate their reforms and make the necessary cultural changes implied by this new joint working dimension. Success on this front is of major importance for reaching our development goals, as well as taking the lead on the global development agenda.

Let us recall that the ultimate objective is to succeed in the fight against poverty. It is only by acting together and by making the best possible use of all the means at our disposal that success can be guaranteed. Thanks to the European Consensus, we now have all the necessary tools to achieve this goal. We must make sure that these commitments remain high on our political agenda and that we do not miss this real opportunity to turn our ambitious political commitments into reality. It goes beyond politics; it is a matter of collective credibility.

  Margrietus van den Berg (PSE), draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on International Trade. – (NL) Mr President, our thanks must go, in the first place, to Mr Hutchinson for this important report. If development aid is to be effective, that presupposes that the EU’s approaches to aid and trade will be mutually coherent. If we want to achieve the Millennium Goals in 2015, aid and trade must – as they indeed can – complement one another, but the lamentable reality is that they often do not. Aid and trade policies – including agriculture – still, all too often operate in isolation from one another, and that is surely one reason why it will take another century for us to make poverty in Africa a thing of the past.

At the moment, little is being said about the coherence of Europe’s policies. Commissioner Mandelson’s negotiators preach free trade subject to global rules, while the people under Commissioner Michel work for development and try to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and policy on agricultural subsidies runs counter to what either camp is aiming for. I regard the various policy fields as comparable to ‘ships that pass in the night’.

In this situation, alas, it is all too often the development aspect that gets squeezed out; for example, trade considerations loom far too large in economic policy agreements, the renowned – or sometimes, perhaps, notorious – Peas. When it comes to development, those who seek aid are all too often pointed towards existing funds, and there is far too little evidence of a truly integrated approach, which really would involve extra money and new development plans being put on the table, despite the fact that it is the EPAs, taking as they do enhanced local cooperation as their starting point, that could help to make aid more effective.

In this respect, we have to take it as read that, in the development field, precautions have to be taken to protect the weaker negotiating parties, so that honest agreements and a realistic timeframe can emerge from the EPAs. If trade is to really ‘take off’, then such things as, for example, the reform of the taxation system with the replacement of duties paid when crossing borders, stronger public and social service institutions, better education and health care, are indispensable. The current lack of coordination and coherence is not merely inefficient but also unacceptable on the grounds that it goes against Article 178 of the Treaty.

One of the reasons for this is that the knowledge and expertise of the trade experts, or, conversely of the developers, often impinge on each other’s area of work, and another is the lack of willingness to tot up the real costs and benefits of integrated development and, together – which means in the Council, too – to seek new funding for it. Moreover, it is often the case that European policies – in such areas as agriculture, trade and development, among others – have the effect of working against each other, export subsidies enable agriculture to dump its products in North Africa, with a consequent increase in unemployment there. Those in charge of immigration complain about the flow of economic refugees from the region and do little by way of providing aid, preferring instead to work on sound agreements on the regional labour market.

The only thing that could make a substantial improvement to the situation would be a coherent European agenda from the Commission and the Council. Global trade is important and of great benefit in enabling developing countries to escape from the vicious cycle of poverty; much is to be gained by a good combination of aid and trade, and the process of combining the two must not be allowed to stand in the way of these countries’ development; it is in this way that we will be able to achieve the Millennium Goals. What I am calling for is a coherent European agenda; the new development cooperation instrument can provide it with a framework.

  Tokia Saïfi, on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. – (FR) Mr President, Commissioner, I should like firstly to thank the rapporteur, Mr Hutchinson, on the quality of his work on this important subject that is so crucial to our future. I congratulate him.

2005 was full of decisive events relating to the issue of development aid. If matters are now really getting under way, let us translate our words into deeds. On this basis, we can only welcome the efforts made by the European Union and by a number of Member States substantially to increase development aid. Although, however, it is obvious that financial resources are indispensable to effective aid, that cannot be enough.

Thus, development practices must be stringently monitored if the implementation of these policies is fully to be measured. Development aid must be as ambitious in terms of quality as it is in terms of funding if there is to be an appreciable reduction in poverty. With this in mind, I would emphasise the importance of putting innovative funding mechanisms in place, enabling stable and predictable resources to be made available. In view of this, I welcome the creation of Unitaid at the last United Nations summit. This will enable developing countries to access medicines more easily. At a time when this mechanism is still in its early days, let us now hope and pray that it will show how effective it is and secure the commitment of countries in addition to those that, on the model of France, are already involved.

The European Union must play the role of conductor with a view to bringing about a better distribution of the tasks under the heading of development aid. Such coordination must take place both at European Union level and on the ground, with the beneficiary nations also being involved. The package of measures designed to bring about effective aid constitutes a first stage. The European Union and its Member States have the same ambitions in terms of development. Let us, therefore, together take up the challenge of bringing about effective and transparent aid while remaining faithful to our commitments.

  Miguel Ángel Martínez Martínez, on behalf of the PSE Group. – (ES) Mr President, the day before yesterday, when we met with the President of Liberia and we tried briefly to describe to her the main efforts that the European Parliament is making in the field of development cooperation, we emphasised that the Socialist Group in the European Parliament had a double commitment: to free up more resources for this task – which we see as a priority amongst the European Union’s responsibilities – and to achieve maximum efficiency in the use of the available resources with a view to achieving tangible results when it comes to meeting an increasingly serious and inescapable challenge.

In this regard, the report prepared by my friend and colleague Mr Hutchinson is a document of very great significance, in terms of its rigour and profundity and given the time at which it is being produced: a time when public opinion in the European Union is becoming aware of the fact that, both on the basis of the principle of solidarity, and given the exodus of emigrants fleeing from under-development towards our countries, Europe has no alternative but to apply all of its efforts to the development and stabilisation of the countries of the South.

The Hutchinson report and his extremely laudable motion for a resolution, which we shall surely approve by an overwhelming majority, are not just one more document amongst the many we debate in our Parliament. Since I entirely agree with its proposals, I shall not reiterate its content now. I will say that it is of particular relevance on a day such as today, when it appears that just a few hours ago we reached a good conclusion in the negotiation on the new legal instrument for the funding of our development cooperation.

I will also say that the report is a piece of true doctrine and that it contains very many ideas and proposals that the Council and above all the Commission will have to take into account in order to increase the effectiveness of our work in the field of cooperation.

We in the European Parliament, in our Committee on Development and, of course, in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament must commit ourselves to ensuring that Mr Hutchinson’s proposals do not remain a mere statement of good intentions and that they do not come to nothing. We must work to ensure that they are a kind of guide for our actions, that the efficiency we achieve in this field contributes to obtaining more and better objective results, which furthermore justify allocating more significant and generous budgets in a field that is no longer a secondary or peripheral matter or a mere means of easing our consciences, and that this area is transformed into a truly major priority within the European Union’s policies.

  Gabriele Zimmer, on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group. – (DE) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like, before all else, to thank Mr Hutchinson for his outstanding report, which my group will endorse unreservedly.

As long ago as the year 2000, the UN General Assembly set itself the task, one that Members belonging to every grouping in this House have taken very seriously over recent years, of making success measurable, setting goals and showing where progress has been achieved. For us, too, the Millennium Development Goals are the yardstick whereby we assess the effectiveness of what we do on the development policy front.

We found the United Nations’ interim report alarming, in that it showed that the targets set had not been achieved, and, while that sort of failure gives well-paid Europeans a guilty conscience, to millions of people living in poverty it means death, and for millions of young women a whole life without education. That should be a good enough reason for the Commission to review the effectiveness of its aid provision, and certainly gives us enough justification for looking further into its self-analysis, so let me again congratulate Mr Hutchinson on the good work he has done in spelling out very clearly to the Commission what it should be doing.

Having said that, though, let me take this opportunity to consider the role of this House, for we too, to some degree, share responsibility for this failure. It is evident that we have, for years on end, been agreeing to budgets that did not do what they were meant to do, but were we in any kind of position to reach better decisions? Do we possess sufficient information to perform our monitoring role? I doubt it. To date, the Commission has produced no convincing evidence of having managed projects in such a way as to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals, and the budget data on the basis of which we have been required to take decisions are superficial.

In 2005, we called on the European Investment Bank to carry out a benchmarking exercise in respect of its lending, that is to say, to evaluate every loan in terms of its contribution to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The funds over which we have control cannot at present be benchmarked in this way, and, since there is no institution that could take over from us the overall monitoring of what is done with the money, we should also demand that we, as Europe’s Parliament, be given permanent input right along the line of development cooperation, in other words, to have a say in the programming of the European Development Fund.

Proposals need to be made at both the national and regional level, containing definite targets and milestones for the progressive achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, and we will, in future, want to see from the Commission country-by-country and region-by-region reports, divided up by sector and project, along with reports listing the project promoters and the firms of consultants involved and detailing the funds that have been remitted to them.

The 65 important proposals contained in the Hutchinson report make clear the fact that this House does indeed possess competence that should be drawn on in future, but I believe there is a second pillar of competence, alongside the governments of the objective regions, in the form of the institutions that operate in those regions, which need to be far more involved. According to one approach, individual donors in a particular region should take on leadership roles in specific sectors; not only does this come in for praise in the report, but we too could consider the possibility of making use of the financial clout that the European Union wields – greater than that of the United Nations – in taking over the leadership in respect of one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, and the one I would propose is water.

The European Union could commit itself to ensuring, jointly with local partners, the supply of drinking water to the continent of Africa and the disposal of its waste water. That would do us more credit than the latest scandal involving the poisoning of drinking water by European companies, and so we should call on the Commission to produce a timetable stating by which dates it should be possible to provide all the major cities south of the Sahara with sustainable systems for the supply of drinking water and the drainage of waste water, and should insist on regular interim progress reports relating to the performance of this task.

I want the Commission to tell us whether or not it possesses the structures that might make a master plan for such a task possible in the first place, and whether it agrees that the international community needs that sort of specialised centre. Better ways must be found of bringing together those who work in the field with policy-makers and donors, and what I would suggest is that the Commission should organise, every other year, an international conference on African development with the specific objective of making policymakers and donors aware of what is needed and of what has been learned in practice. One possibility is that there could be an exhibition detailing successful and unsuccessful projects, with the former being honoured.

This would also be an opportunity to recruit new specialised workers in the field of development cooperation, particularly from among young people.

  Ryszard Czarnecki (NI). – (PL) Mr President, whenever people are asked to identify the dominant global superpower, they all name the United States. It is, however, the European Union which provides over half of the public aid in the world and is the biggest donor in the world. Unfortunately, this achievement does not translate into European leadership in the international arena. We say ‘Union’ but we think in terms of ‘Member States’, as the European Council’s decisions from December 2005 in Brussels clearly state that 80% to 90% of new aid to developing countries must come from the Member States.

We should ask ourselves whether, in the future, we will be prepared to view debt reduction for specific countries, most recently Iraq and Nigeria, as a form of development aid. It is an easy solution for the Union but, in effect, it reduces the actual amount of aid provided to developing countries. Nonetheless, leaving debt cancellation aside, there was a five billion increase in the actual aid provided to poor countries last year. Some refer to this sum as ‘only five billion’, and others say ‘as much as five billion’.

In conclusion, speaking as a representative of a new Member State of the European Union, the new and poorer countries of the Union find themselves in a completely unfamiliar situation. We are part of the European Community and wish to accept the obligations involved. Our countries need to understand that there are those in the world who are even poorer than us.

  Karin Scheele (PSE). – (DE) Mr President, I, too, should like to congratulate the rapporteur on his very good report. In its 65 points, he addresses the many areas and factors that will be necessary to provide more and better aid. He discusses the innovative sources of financing for development and the need for an approach involving debt relief, in order to give the developing countries greater room for manoeuvre in the fight against poverty, and, of course, he also stresses that there needs to be consistency between the various policy areas. Our aid will only be effective if there is greater consistency between the policy areas.

It is clear that efficiency must not undermine the necessary accountability. Precisely at a time when ever greater resources are being devoted to development cooperation as direct budget aid, sufficient resources are needed to build an independent and critical civil society. If the donor countries want to make their aid more effective, they are in many domains dependent on non-governmental organisations in order to ensure that the aid provided is actually used to reduce poverty, and that it does in fact reach the poor and disadvantaged in the partner countries.

The Member States must keep to the commitments they have made regarding the funding of development aid, in other words 0.56% of their gross domestic product in 2010 and 0.7% in 2015. In this connection, it is important to note that debt relief should not be included in these calculations. According to the most recent figures from the OECD's Development Assistance Committee, in 2005 the European Union identified debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria, in particular, as development aid, despite the fact that the Monterrey Consensus explicitly states that financial resources provided for debt relief should not come from development aid funds that are normally intended to be directly available for developing countries.

The European Parliament therefore calls on the Member States to draw up an accurate list each year, clearly showing the contributions provided directly for development aid. As the rapporteur said, aid from the European Union and the Member States must be coordinated in a complementary way and be consistent. Many of the partner countries are overwhelmed by the number of donors: parallel projects often result in an unnecessary duplication of structures and sometimes even hinder progress. It will only be possible to solve this problem by means of better coordination between the development cooperation of the Community and that of the Member States.

The report proposes a working group in which representatives of civil society should be involved. Specific case studies should be used to show what is already working and where a great deal of work still needs to be done.

  Justas Vincas Paleckis (PSE). – (LT) I welcome the rapporteur and support the main point of the presentation. The European Union is able to become, and in fact must become, a leader, not only in terms of the scope but also in terms of the effectiveness of aid. We can continue to express our regret that the amount of aid to third countries is insufficient, but first we need to be sure that whatever aid is at hand is used effectively. We need to better coordinate the provision of aid, abandon the redundant formalities and strengthen control in order to be able to respond to the ever-changing situation. The role of the European Commission should only intensify in this respect, in particular when coordinating the provision of aid. This is quite significant for the new Member States, since their contribution to aiding developing countries is gradually increasing. In this sense Lithuania is already changing its status within the World Bank by its transformation from a beneficiary country to a donor country, a situation which will largely facilitate my country’s involvement in the Bank‘s development programmes.

A factor of crucial importance is public support, as to date it has not been as substantial as it should be. We need to promote the perception among new Member States that by aiding developing countries we also help ourselves. In these times of globalisation, the world reminds us that poverty and hunger, unrest and natural disasters in Africa or Asia also impact stability and standards of living in Europe or America. However, beneficiary countries also need to demonstrate their capacity to properly manage the funds entrusted to them. Maximum attention to the issue should come from the Members of Parliament, and from both the EU and from beneficiary States.

  President. – The debate is closed.

The vote will take place today, at 12 noon.

Written statements (Rule 142)

  Filip Kaczmarek (PPE-DE). – (PL) Mr President, the explanatory statement in Mr Hutchinson’s report begins with the dramatic assertion that, throughout the world, 11 children die every minute as a result of hunger and poverty.

It is indeed hard to find a better reason for tackling the issue of the effectiveness of European Union development aid. One cannot but agree with the statement that it only makes sense to increase development aid funding if there is a significant improvement in the effectiveness of this aid. I am convinced that the citizens of Europe will support an increase in funding for development aid. They will not, however, tolerate waste, inefficiency, a lack of transparency and sham activities, hence the importance of improving efficiency.

It is crucial that only actual aid should be classed as such. I therefore support the view that reducing poor countries’ debt should be kept separate from expenditure on development aid. Indeed, the HIPC initiative has not provided a permanent solution to the problem of the indebtedness of poor countries. On the other hand, it is essential for the greatest possible amount of financial aid available to be sent directly to the beneficiaries. It is important not to create the impression that a large proportion of these funds is used to pay middle men such as civil servants and advisers. The provision on achieving deeper, decentralised cooperation and working directly with local authorities in developing countries should therefore be recognised as being worthy of support.

(The sitting was suspended at 11.55 a.m. and resumed for voting time at 12.05 p.m.)

IN THE CHAIR: MR GÉRARD ONESTA
Vice-President

  Emine Bozkurt (PSE). – (NL) Mr President, I would like to put a point of order. Lívia Járóka, a Member of this House who has been nominated for the ‘MEP of the year’ award for her determined campaign for Roma rights, has been the subject of racist and misogynistic emails of the sort that I regard as completely out of place in this House. This is intolerable, and I would like the House to take note of it.

(Applause)

  President. – I believe that the applause is indicative of our fellow Members’ approval of what you have said.

  Doris Pack (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, I am in complete agreement with what Mrs Bozkurt said. I find it quite indecent that a Bulgarian observer is attempting to trample all over Mrs Járóka's dignity: that is precisely what his e-mail does. I expect the presidency to take firm action in this matter. He does not belong in this House.

(Sustained applause)

  Charles Tannock (PPE-DE). – Mr President, on a point of order, I wish to protest at the address made by Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon to the Conference of Presidents yesterday. He made a totally biased, one-sided address and there was no catch-the-eye opportunity to reply to what he said. It was all stitched up by the political groups – fair enough, perhaps. But I would ask the Conference of Presidents, in the interests of fair and balanced reporting, to issue an invitation to the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister of Israel, so that we can hear the other side of the story.

(Loud applause)

  President. – All that will be passed on to the competent bodies.