Proposition 53K1847

Proposition de résolution relative à la position à défendre par le gouvernement belge dans le cadre du 4e Forum de haut niveau sur l'efficacité de l'aide.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Stefaan Vercamer
Ecolo Thérèse Snoy et d'Oppuers
Groen Wouter De Vriendt
MR Corinne De Permentier
PS | SP Patrick Moriau
Vooruit Dirk Van der Maelen

Submission date

Oct. 26, 2011

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

resolution of parliament development aid

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld MR

Abstained from voting

∉ N-VA LDD VB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Nov. 17, 2011 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur, Mr. Brotcorne is absent. I suppose he returns to his written report.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, our group fully supports this draft resolution. Sometimes there may be other emphasis, but we agree on the essence.

The discussion on the effectiveness of the aid is of great importance. We really expect our country to be committed to making the fourth High Level Forum in South Korea a success. With this, we also want to give the signal that we support our Minister to actively participate so that it will be a success there.

However, CD&V also has a few questions and wants to emphasize them. It is a pity that the Minister is not present. In the committee, the minister promised us and we had actually even agreed that he would inform us about the conclusion of the discussion and the talks he held on the European level on Monday. He would also inform us about the position that Europe would take.

We also signaled in the committee that Parliament should be more involved in the preparation of such international conferences. There could also have been better discussions before this conference. Just the finding that the Senate yesterday issued an opinion on a position of the European Commission that was discussed on Monday clarifies that there could have been better coordination in bringing together the opinions and bringing them together in time to reach a Belgian position.

Our question is that the Minister and our country should take advantage of the opportunity to better prepare such international conferences in the future and involve NGOs. From their field knowledge and experience they have a vision of the challenges, difficulties and opportunities related, among other things, to this international forum.

In terms of preparation, it is therefore a bit of a missed opportunity, but we want to give this resolution in any case a broad mandate to attract the conference and ensure that it becomes a success.

I will intervene from my bank.

As the main contributor of this resolution, I would like to thank my colleagues from the N-VA for the amendments, the improvement of the text. I would also like to thank my colleague from CD&V for the improvements he has made in the text. Friends of the Greens! have, as expected, also improved our text by putting more emphasis on climate change. The colleagues of the Liberal Signature have made a good change, namely, more attention to the local actors in our partner countries, so that they can check whether the development money is used properly. I think I mentioned everyone with this.

This is a crucial resolution in which we have laid out lines for our country’s development cooperation policy. In particular, Sp.a welcomes the latter point, which provides for an arrangement of a dialogue between the government and the Parliament on development policy.

I would like to thank all the colleagues, the main contributors, PS and CD&V and all the other colleagues who have made amendments. I hope that the colleagues of the N-VA can join the consensus, because unfortunately they did not approve the resolution in the committee.

I would also like to thank all my colleagues in the Committee on Foreign Relations, in particular Mr. Van der Maelen, for the excellent debate we held and the enrichment of the text by the contribution of each, which the main authors accepted.

I will emphasize several points that hold me to heart in the effectiveness of development aid. In fact, we think this is a major issue. The amount of this development aid is often discussed with the aim of reaching 0.7% of GDP, but the effectiveness is even more important: it is a question of whether this aid brings progress to the beneficiary countries in their development, in particular in sustainable development.

The first requirement contained in this resolution is essential to our view: insist on policy coherence. Without this coherence between development aid policy and other policies that produce an external impact on our country and Europe, it would be useless to support and finance projects as praiseworthy, social and environmental as they may be. Thus, we target policies, trade and agriculture or foreign investment that would not take into account the country’s own capacity to develop and thus annihilate the effectiveness of aid.

At an Interparliamentary Union forum, we were able to hear ACP representatives testify that certain aspects of European trade policy, in particular the obligation to open their borders to imports, could undermine the full effectiveness of agricultural development projects financed by development aid.

We also know that certain aspects of the common agricultural policy can have negative effects on the opportunities for developing a peasant agriculture in the South, since our products are exported at so competitive prices that they make local agricultural products uncompetitive.

We also believe that investments made by some of our companies, whether they are agricultural investments in large monoculture or in the exploitation of mining and oil resources, can also cause many social problems, violations of human rights and thus annihilate the efforts made in the framework of our development aid precisely to respect a whole set of principles and consistency with sustainable development. This question of consistency is very important for us. We want Belgium to defend it at the Busan High-Level Forum. We want it to be implemented and to remain constantly vigilant regarding the consistency of our policies.

The second point that is dear to us is the democratic appropriation of aid. Actors in the beneficiary countries should be able to participate in the use of development aid, both the population itself, its association representatives and its political representatives. Since we are here in Parliament, I also want to say how much we attach to the importance that national parliaments and, in the mirror, our parliaments can be associated with the programming and appropriation of aid flows, with the way they are distributed and managed. We also approved an amendment introduced by Mr. Donnea on the question of appropriation by national parliaments.

A third point that keeps us at heart is the systematic anchoring of gender issues, including the defense of women’s rights in all development aid projects and a particular attention to women who, in many countries and societies, are still discriminated, have no right of access to property, right of access to inheritance and cannot access a range of professions. We believe that at all times, our development aid should pay special attention to women’s rights.

Finally, we introduced an amendment that aims to put the Sustainable Development Goals ahead of a purely economic growth goal that we consider important. We do not export economic growth that is unsustainable, that exploits resources excessively or that does not respect social rights. It is well known that some actors in development aid now want to put a particular emphasis on growth. We believe that growth that does not pay attention to the long-term, future generations and resource conservation is completely inappropriate.

Finally, we introduced an amendment referring to external financial flows to development aid, proposing that they also be subject to the same efficiency criteria. We wanted to introduce the fight against climate change, as financial commitments need to be decided at international conferences in this area. It is important that they comply with the sustainable development criteria relating to efficiency and democratic appropriation, which are defended in terms of development aid.

We hope to have helped strengthen the Belgian position at the Busan Conference. But it is also clear that voting on this resolution serves to define the nature and modalities of the aid we want to provide, so that it respects social rights and sustainable development.

I would like to thank all colleagues. We will vote in favour of this resolution, which includes many of our amendments.

Many things have been said. Therefore, I will not paraphrase mr. Van der Maelen and Mrs. Snoy. I would just like to emphasize a few points that hold me ⁇ at heart. And I hope that our delegation in Busan will also be keen to defend them.

Our resolution is fully in line with the Common Position of the European Union for the Fourth Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which was adopted by the Council on Foreign Affairs on 14 November. You find a lot of common points between our resolution and this common position of the Union.

If we want to increase the effectiveness of aid, including public development aid, we must also strengthen good governance in the countries we help. A logical way to strengthen good governance in these countries is to strengthen the capacity of parliaments to collaborate with the government in defining the allocation of aid, but also in controlling its implementation.

As a general rule, it is in our interest to also strengthen, in the developing countries we help, the state structures that control the execution of budgets and the regularity of accounts, in other words, that control the honesty of governments. Indeed, in so far as some countries develop effective control bodies, auditing courts, auditing chambers, whatever the name, effective, this means that we can also use more sectoral or general budgetary assistance.

Sectorial or general budgetary aid is obviously a way to inject much faster liquidity into the economies we help in order to help them have in certain sectors effective policies. What very often hampers European cooperation, either at the level of the Union or at the level of the States, is that public procurement procedures, decision-making procedures, when it comes to implementing concrete projects in one or another country, are often extremely heavy and extremely long. We are much less efficient when it comes to doing this than some emerging countries like China, India or Brazil.

Therefore, strengthening parliaments and government control bodies is an effective way to establish conditions for budgetary aid that will allow much faster progress in development aid.

I come to the second comment I wanted to make.

We have every interest in collaborating with emerging countries, in combining our efforts – I mean here, for example, with African countries that are our partners – rather than spending our time with disbelief or looking at them as a fain dog.

A study recently published by the OECD puts forward a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that the fears we have, for example, about China’s presence in Africa, are not at all grounded and that most theoretical reproaches and intent trials that can be made against this country are fading away. The same goes for other emerging countries.

Therefore, the risks that were believed to be on the horizon are unfounded. I think here, for example, of those who say that increasing the share of emerging countries in aid would result in an increase in debt, corruption, a relaxation in terms of governance.

In any case, according to a study recently published by the OECD – this is an annual publication – on the economic prospects for Africa, all of these spectrums have somehow deflated.

This does not mean that the risk is reduced to zero, but that, so far, the risks have not materialized to the height and measure of what could be feared.

To make our aid more effective, I think we have every interest in launching and developing triangular operations with a number of emerging countries that are already extremely active.

I come to my third comment.

In my opinion, the aid will be even more effective as it is organized at the regional level in Africa.

This is ⁇ true for other continents as well, but we are less present there than we are in Africa.

In order for aid to contribute to addressing the major challenges facing subregional groups in Africa, it must aim to strengthen regional structures. Epidemiological problems, health problems, climate problems – which do not know borders – or the problems of building large cross-regional infrastructures will not be solved by simply working country by country.

We need to help emerging regional organizations, which are increasingly strong in Africa. Indeed, the African Union has recognized a number of subregional organizations, such as the Economic Community of West African States or the East African Community, which are its pillars. The African Union has very well understood that it is through a series of regional decentralized organizations that we must work if we want to strengthen the effectiveness of development policies and address the real challenges at the regional or continental level.

The fourth observation. We will have to take into account the fact that public development aid is no longer the main source of development financing, and this is ⁇ the case in Africa. New actors are involved. There are private foundations that have considerable budgets, such as the Bill Gates Foundation, which is involved in the fight against certain diseases. There are also sovereign funds from emerging countries. There are exchange operations, from China or other countries, that exchange oil or copper for road construction, for example.

We must therefore be aware of the fact that we will increasingly have to try to involve private foundations, a series of sovereign funds from emerging countries, a series of actors from development banks from emerging countries, to try to involve them in our work on aid effectiveness. He is pleased to acknowledge that some of them are already participating in some work of the OECD Development Aid Committee.

Here, Mr. Speaker, are a few modest thoughts. The future will likely reserve us increasingly sluggish budgets. We must do better and better with less and less.

This means that all the reflections on the effectiveness of aid that started a few years ago with the Paris Declaration and that continued in Accra in 2008 with the Accra Agenda and that will now, hopefully, improve in Busan, all these reflections are extremely important not only for our taxpayers but also for the recipients of aid, who will have to try to do much better in the future with ⁇ less, but I think there is a way to be more effective. Just like in our countries, many malfunctions occur in the countries we help, preventing the money we inject into them from being fully efficient.

First and foremost, we thank the initiator, colleague Dirk Van der Maelen. As co-contributors to this proposal for a resolution, we will of course support them. It is an important text for an important conference. At the end of this month, Busan will discuss the effectiveness of aid and development cooperation. This is a very important debate. After all, when one wants to bow over the necessity and opportunity of development work, there is a need for support from the public opinion. Accountability is gaining more and more ground. It is necessary to account for the expenditure of public funds. The Busan Conference is a very important step in this regard.

We also need a Belgian government that takes the current developments in development cooperation seriously and that deals with ways to make our development cooperation more effective.

I ⁇ the remarks of colleague De Donnea. He has already given rise to the big questions that we will have to address in the coming months. The challenges are huge and the context has actually changed. It is not my intention to conduct the debate today, but I believe that Busan and the upcoming budget discussions on the policy note on development cooperation will be important. The Federal Parliament must decide whether development cooperation is still meaningful, and if so, how we will shape it.

Over the past two years, we have seen, especially on budgetary level, that the trend is negative. Our country has not achieved the target of 0.7%, neither in 2010, nor in 2011. On the contrary, there is a downward trend.

But it’s not just about quantitative targets, but also about the effectiveness of the aid. And then there are other concepts, such as ownership, alignment, harmonisation, result-oriented management and mutual accountability. All these concepts were actually discussed already in 2005 with the Paris Declaration and were followed by the Accra Summit in 2008. Let the Busan Forum be a next step in the process of further and better refining development cooperation.

The world has changed greatly and, as colleague de Donnea just said, there are now other partners on the ground. There are private actors and new countries are donors, the BRIC countries, for example, who are no longer developing countries, but new donors with their own way of doing development cooperation, which poses a number of challenges to us, the old Europe as such. The way China develops in a country like the Congo poses a very large number of challenges.

It is difficult to put conditionality of development cooperation and aid on the table, as a very large country, especially China, attracts little of that conditionality and imposes very few conditions on a country like Congo. It is also a question of whether countries like China and Russia attach as much value to concepts such as transparency, ownership and reciprocity as we do. There may be different rules of the game, there may be different laws.

So I think we should devote a fundamental debate to development cooperation in the coming term. If I remember correctly, in 2008 there was an attempt to initiate such a debate and then Minister Charles Michel attempted to establish a new basic law of international cooperation. Not much of this has been done, but I can still expect the next government to work on that.

There is also a different budget climate. It is no longer obvious to spend a lot of money on development cooperation. However, we must do so, not only out of international solidarity, but also because it is in our own interest to provide development opportunities to countries in the South. We are faced daily with problems such as the influx of climate refugees and large migration flows. But if we give every country equal opportunities for development, it will also benefit our situation here in Europe.

With budget support as a way to do development cooperation, we must be careful. Collega de Donnea spoke about sectoral budget support. At the moment, the proportion of budget support in our development cooperation is already minimal, due, among other things, to concerns regarding transparency, good spending and control and due to the fear of corruption. So let us be careful if we want to take steps to reduce budget support.

I have already talked about quantity. In any case, if one wants to ⁇ an effective development cooperation – I have also said it in the committee – it must first be sufficiently large and therefore also a sufficiently large budget. This year we reach 0.57 % of GDP, while in 2010 we should have already reached 0.7 %. We will see what the next budget brings us and what the new government will decide on development cooperation.

I will conclude with a comment on coherence, which should also be discussed in the upcoming debate. It’s a bit of my horse. A development cooperation that is very large in volume can be countered by a trade policy that blocks just those opportunities for development of countries in the South. Therefore, please also provide the necessary incentives in trade policy and other areas to maximise development opportunities.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not going further. We must have an absolute debate on the subject in our House in the coming months, but the debate will take place in other halls and at other times.

I would like, for the clarity of the debates, to clarify that Minister Chastel is apologized for this session. We have decided to advance the filing and discussion of this resolution.

Did you forget me?

I will never forget you!

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Prime Minister, my colleagues, the work in the Committee on Foreign Relations, as we have said, has been very constructive and we can look forward to it. This is how we have been able to adjust some aspects to reach a broad compromise, while retaining the essence of this text of which I am a co-signature.

Our Assembly will thus define a clear and strong position, with indispensable nuances, towards the Government, which it will be able to defend at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness that will be held at the end of the month.

As I have already said in the committee, a sustainable and coherent development policy is, for my group, essential. The Millennium Goals seem thus more than ever to have to guide our policies, a fortiori in a context that generates self-determination. The effectiveness of this aid is central and must be strengthened, as well as its international coherence. We must emphasize its appropriation, so that beneficiary countries can manage their own development by consulting all relevant stakeholders.

In my view as the Chairman of the Working Group on the Belgian Fund for Food Security, and generally in our parliamentary work, the objectives of poverty eradication, the defense of rights and the fight against inequalities must guide our actions and policies. It is about fighting inequality and poverty more effectively and consistently, which are, unfortunately, always a reality that is constantly worsening.

Ambitious and concrete objectives must be pursued, in particular to ensure that the actions of our development cooperation – which I welcome in the passage – focus on key issues such as the democratic involvement of relevant actors in the aided countries, the development of civil society or the indispensable gender equality and the recognition of the fundamental role played by women.

All these points must be fully taken into account in national and supranational development strategies. But this resolution that we are going to adopt also takes into account a theme that, you know, holds me at heart, namely that of food security. Food security will become increasingly a challenge, but above all an imperative in an increasingly densely populated world: for 7 billion inhabitants, 1 billion suffer from hunger and 1 death due to malnutrition occurs every four seconds.

Furthermore, the role of the lucrative private sector is also central in the development of economic growth, but it must obviously be regulated, in particular by prohibiting, for example, the use of tax havens: the goal is of course to reach full and sustainable development for the benefit of local populations by ensuring maximum transparency as a guarantee of the effectiveness of the aid that we must imperatively continue to provide.

This transparency will also go through a boost of information from our Parliament and civil society in order to take advantage of everyone’s constructive comments and questions.

Finally, the effectiveness and consistency of aid are at the heart of development cooperation work. Therefore, the work of this forum will only be all the more crucial, a fortiori in this period of crisis that some might take as a pretext and restrict, or even abandon their duty of solidarity.

For the improvement of the quality of life of everyone, regardless of their continent, is also a duty of coherence with the deepest values that animate us.