Development cooperation: priority to the Millennium Goals

After two years of negotiations with the EU Council, on Thursday the European Parliament's Development Committee approved an agreement on the financing instrument for development co-operation for 2007-2013, which reflects Parliament's main demands on the structure and priorities of Community aid. Another key point for MEPs is that Parliament preserved its codecision powers, which the Commission had sought to bring into question.

In a report drafted by Gay Mitchell (EPP-ED, IE), the Development Committee agreed to renew what is one of the EU's most important instruments for funding its development cooperation, with a budget of nearly €17 billion for 2007-2013.

Following pressure from MEPs, the instrument's scope will be restricted to developing countries. The Commission had wanted to extend it to industrialised countries which have pre-accession, neighbourhood or partnership agreements with the EU. MEPs, however, insist that development policy must focus on the developing countries, in line with the Millennium Goals.

Parliament also battled for, and won, a separate instrument for human rights. In addition, the Commission promised to allocate 20% of the geographical programmes to primary and secondary education as well as basic healthcare.

Parliament's powers safeguarded

Development policy is the only external relations area in which Parliament has co-decision powers with the Council. It was important for MEPs to safeguard these powers for the purpose of deciding on the geographical programmes and thematic areas of aid. The Commission had wanted to decide on its own after receiving the opinion of a committee of experts (the "comitology" procedure) but the accord reached with the Council preserves Parliament's co-decision rights.

The Commission must also inform Parliament regularly of the work done by the above committee. Parliament will receive, at the same time as members of that committee, the meeting agendas, the strategy plans for each country and the minutes of the meetings.

Lastly, the Development Committee emphasised that the funding provided must be approved by the national auditing body and the parliament of each partner country concerned. Any suspension of aid will be decided by the EU Council of Ministers by a qualified majority, after Parliament has delivered an opinion.

| Arriba |

• 07/07/07: Europeans support the Millennium Development Goals (6/7/2007)
• "Ce que l'Europe fit, l'Afrique va le faire" - discours du Commissaire Michel (17/4/2007)
• Development Aid: EU Commission presents its results for 2006  (20/3/2007)
• EU Commission proposes European strategy to promote gender equality in development cooperation (8/3/2007)
• EU Commission proposes Code of Conduct for improved division of labour between EU Donors (28/2/2007)
• EU Presidency Statement - Follow-up to major UN conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields and follow-up to the Millennium Summit  (6/12/2006)
• EU Presidency Statement - Partnerships towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (27/11/2006)
• Journées européennes du développement - Discours de clôture (17/11/2006)
• International development community meets for first European Development Days (19/10/2006)