European Parliament: Development cooperation of the "new EU donors" in the spotlight

The Public Hearing on „New EU Donors“ organised on 30 January 2007 by the Committee of Development of the European Parliament, comes as a specific follow-up of the Joint Committee Meeting held in October 2006 on „European Development Policies“, an event where representatives of National Parliaments of the Member States and Acceding Countries exchanged views on main development matters, with a focus on the coherence and coordination of the EU development policy.

The purpose of the event was to focus on the „ten plus two“ new EU Member States (NMS) and their performances so far in the mainstream of the European Development Cooperation Policy. The discussion covered the state of preparedness of the New EU donors in terms of capacity building to fully participate in the EU Development Policy - the Heads of the Slovenian and Polish Development Cooperation units in the respective Ministries of Foreign Affairs presented their strategies for assistance.

TRIALOG was invited to reflect on the perspective of civil society and gave the floor to Marian Caucik, Chairman of the Slovak NGDO Platform, to represent the NMS development NGO community in this event. Marian Caucik gave an overview of the actions of NGOs in development cooperation, where they see the main problem areas and fields of cooperation with the government, and the European perspective. Marian stressed that NGOs are the best vehicles for raising the public awareness in new member states for the need of financing development aid, as they are closer to the people and often more trustworthy than political leaders. He also called on MEPs from the Development Committee to visit National Parliaments in NMS and discuss issues of development cooperation, still in the shadow of general foreign policy issues.

The moderator Filip Kaczmarek, MEP and DEVE Committee member from Poland retained the idea and concluded that EU development aid in New Member States cannot be effective without the general public being supportive of it and that the role of the civil society is crucial in mustering more awareness and understanding for development cooperation in the EU „New Donors“.

For more information on the Hearing incl. the text of all speeches, please visit the website of the EP Development Committee at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/compa....

Download the speech of Marian Caucik, Slovak NGDO platform MVRO, from: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/compa....

View some photos at: http://www.trialog.or.at/docs/publi....

Information provided by Asya Bocheva, TRIALOG