Proposition 52K0762

Projet de loi visant à empêcher la saisie ou la cession des fonds publics destinés à la coopération internationale, notamment par la technique des fonds vautours.

General information ¶

Submitted by

The Senate

Submission date

Jan. 9, 2008

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

seizure of goods development aid public debt debt reduction

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR FN VB

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Discussion ¶

March 6, 2008 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The President, Mr. Moriau cannot be present and refers to his written report.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, you all know my interest in development cooperation. Together with many colleagues, I am committed to keeping the topic on the political agenda, so as not to forget that the budget for development cooperation must be increased, to monitor the impact of development cooperation by measuring them visibly also on the ground. This is what we all are doing. I look at Mr. Van der Maelen. We want development cooperation on the ground to be felt also for the male and female in the South. We want to have as many positive effects as possible. Aasgier funds do just the opposite. They are on the lookout until the resources allocated for development cooperation enter a country. Then they are confiscated because they have overbought the debts of the developing country in question.

It goes without saying that the Open Vld fully adheres to the bill, which keeps aasgier funds away from our development cooperation. Twice – it must be said – such a fund seized funds that we had allocated to improve the fate of people in Congo, Brazzaville. Therefore, it is not too late for us to vote on the bill.

However, we need to think carefully about how we can prevent developing countries and other donors from becoming victims of assault funds. I think of technical assistance in the field of debt policy and debt management, or an international code of conduct, so that the resale of debts and aggressive hedge funds becomes impossible. Per ⁇ we can cut the theme next week when we begin our debate on the revision of the 1999 Law, the Basic Law on Development Cooperation. We must pay for these structures.

The situation is now too urgent to wait for this debate. First of all, I would like to thank my colleague in the Senate, Mr Paul Wille, for submitting the bill to the Senate and having it put to vote.

Belgium, colleagues, can now be one of the first European countries to take a stand on the issue. Hopefully the other countries will follow.

Colleagues, the Open Vld group will later fully support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to the objective of these hedge funds, which were recalled by Hilde Vautmans, I would like to highlight two points that I find essential, so that this bill not only has a more general scope, but also a greater efficiency, so that the amounts and goods intended for Belgian international cooperation as well as the amounts and goods intended for Belgian public development aid are not seized by hedge funds upon their arrival in the countries receiving such aid.

First, it seems obvious and legitimate that this law does not concern only the goods or funds destined to the highly indebted poor countries (PPTE), but to all of the 80 countries considered poor according to the criteria of the World Bank and included in this list.

However, I would like to emphasize, since the debate took place in a committee, that we will not submit an amendment to expand the bill today, but that ⁇ very soon, we will submit proposals for those 80 countries to benefit from this law and not exclusively the PPTE. This seems to us fundamental.

Secondly, in order to complement the main idea of this law, which aims at the effective use of these aid by the countries concerned, it would be necessary to provide them with legal assistance very quickly, so that they can defend themselves legally when a hedge fund wants to seize these sums and those assets at the time of their receipt. In fact, we should never forget that a law is adopted in Belgium, but that it is not valid in the Congo, for example. It is known that today, in the DRC, a whale fund demands a sum of 420 million euros. In the light of the foregoing, it would be important that Development Cooperation provides for technical and legal assistance so that the country concerned can validly defend itself on the ground and before its own courts, since it is large law firms that land in these countries to claim this kind of sum.

Finally, it would be necessary for the countries concerned to adopt this type of legislation so that it has a scope in each country and ⁇ work, as Hilde Vautmans recalled, on the development of a European or UN directive. This seems to us to be fundamental for the money we allocate to those countries that are in great need of it to serve the population and not the finance and speculators.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, Ecolo will support this bill because it goes in the direction of what we want. We would like to see more of this type of proposals because they should allow the countries of the South, the underdeveloped countries to access autonomy and real independence so that we can fight together, effectively, against underdevelopment.

I’m not going to repeat all the evil that we think of bull funds. The proposal we will vote today speaks enough about this.

I would just like to add that, beyond the threat they pose to Belgian public development aid, these bullshit funds also attack the poorest countries and treat them in such a way that they are forced to submit to increasingly enforced judicial decisions. We fear that this jurisprudence will expand and affect many projects and countries, Congo first, which is one of our priority partners in development.

We support this proposal, but we would have liked it to go to the end of its logic. Of course, denouncing bull funds is a good attitude, but providing legal assistance and advice to developing countries that are victims of it is even better. The fact of making these claims unattainable and unattainable is no more honorable. However, we are still in a healing perspective. Therefore, it is important to take a preventive approach. Prevention is always cheaper than repair. More here than elsewhere, this doctrine is up to date.

Most of Belgium’s claims to developing countries originate from the Belgian Export Credit Agency, known as the Ducroire National Office. We would have liked to move from words to acts and, in this proposal, we would also adopt a regulation that would make sure that this agency could not fall into the circuit that would make a debt that a Southern country can not repay ends up in the hands of these wicked and cowardly creditors.

We will probably bring in the upcoming debate proposals so that the coward funds can no longer intervene in the entire chain of the operation and seize the debts of the countries of the South. I would like to remind you that even at the Club de Paris, which is the informal group of public creditors whose official mission is to find coordinated solutions to the payment difficulties of the indebted countries, and of which Belgium is a member, there is today a “gentlemen’s agreement” aimed at preventing the sale of debts to buyers who could make a misuse of it. This is where we would like to contribute to this debate.

We also support the proposals that have just been submitted by the VLD and the PS but we believe there is still a step to be taken. We also support the Senate’s recommendations that ask the competent minister to advocate at the European level – and we would like that to be the case at the international level – in favor of legislation that prevents the most indebted countries from falling into the wrists of these worthless funds.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I thank the colleagues of the Senate who are at the origin of the project that we are discussing today.

We will support this bill as well as the government. We therefore recall the importance that the CDH attaches to development cooperation in general and in this case to debt relief of developing countries. The aim of this bill is to make the funds dedicated to development cooperation inaccessible and inaccessible and to prevent the establishment of financial mechanisms aimed at recovering the debts of developing countries under very favourable conditions for the organisations that use them.

By analyzing this project, it appears urgent to adopt legal provisions to respond to this new situation that is detrimental to the development of these countries and to legally equip ourselves to block immoral practices. This is the whole meaning of this bill that we will support. We dare to hope, like Ms. Vautmans, that other states will adopt similar provisions, since our country is one of the first in Europe to position itself in relation to this problem.