Today in the European Institutions – 25 May 2011
Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Commission Vice-President and Štefan Füle, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, today launched a new and ambitious European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) -- confirming the EU’s determined and reinforced engagement with its neighbours.
Read the entire press release on the matter from the European Commission. Ashton's speech from the Joint Press Conference can be found here while a speech by Štefan Füle here.
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The Development Committee of the European Parliament has voted two important reports today.
If development policy's ultimate aim - eradicating poverty - is to be achieved, then EU development aid must focus "on the poorest and most vulnerable countries and on reaching the poorest layers of society", says the report, drafted by Filip Kaczmarek (EPP, PL) on the future of development policy. "We should not have a purely economic understanding of poverty since it is multi-dimensional and includes a whole range of economic, political, cultural deprivations and exclusions", warned Mr Kaczmarek.
In the budget support report, drafted by Charles Goerens (ALDE, LU), MEPs point out that the principle underlying this aid instrument is that developing countries should own their development strategies. To this end, they call for more parliamentary oversight of spending and more involvement of civil society in holding governments accountable.
The Kaczmarek report is a response to the Green Paper of the European Commission on the future of the development policy, published in November 2010 while the Goerens report sets out Parliament's input to a Commission Communication on budget support, to be published in the second half of 2011, in preparation for the EU's next multi-annual budget (2014-2020).
Read the entire press release on the matter from the European Parliament.
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Commission President Barroso made a statement on the adoption of an extra 1.24 billion euro for European Neighbourhood Policy on the eve of the G8 Summit - a concrete response to the Arab Spring and the aspirations of our Eastern Partners.
Read the statement here.
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The Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) has met today in the configuration for Development. The central statement of the Hungarian Presidency’s report at this meeting was that the future reform of the European Union’s development policy must focus on water.
Remarks by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton at the end of the meeting.
Press release from the Hungarian Presidency.
