Activites

• 2003/07/31 Final act published in Official Journal
• 2002/05/16 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
  • T5-0257/2002 summary

    Conscious of the important role that the EU Member States play in every sphere of United Nations operations, Parliament has adopted the report by Mr Joaquim Miranda (GUE/NGL, P) on the communication from the Commission on building an effective partnership with the United Nations in the fields of development and humanitarian affairs. While approving the communication, Parliament deplores the fact that the document disregards key issues such as peacekeeping, crisis management and conflict prevention. These matters will therefore have to be addressed by the Commission in a subsequent communication. Taking the view that the EU should obtain membership of the UN specialised agencies in its own right, Parliament suggests that the EU should use the intergovernmental conference scheduled for 2004 as the occasion on which to clarify the issues surrounding the legal basis for its external action within the context of international law, particularly by defining and strengthening the Commission's legal status in international institutions. Parliament emphasises the paramount role of the strategic political dialogue in the preparation of policies and programmes designed to enable the EU to play a more active role within the UN. This dialogue must first be established in the domains of food aid and development cooperation. In addition, the two organisations should intensify their cooperation on the ground in the developing countries in order to guarantee a complementary and coherent institutional approach. Parliament maintains that country strategy papers must be coordinated with the UN assessments of the countries concerned and that the same or similar and compatible performance indicators must be used to check on the impact and quality of development aid. It also believes that a stable financial framework should be established to enable relations between the two institutions to be based on coherent financial principles and rules and that a new framework agreement should be drawn up to this end. The House has also adopted an amendment asking the Commission to provide Parliament regularly with a quantitative and qualitative appraisal of the amount of EU funds channelled through the United Nations as a whole, as well as through individual agencies. In particular, it calls on the Commission to involve social movements and movements representing civil society actively and democratically throughout the development-aid process. Lastly, focusing on the generally poor performance of the international community in responding to major disasters, Parliament emphasises that emergency aid must dovetail with rehabilitation and development and suggests that the EU and the UN could create joint rapid-response units to improve preparedness for major disasters in various regions of the world. �

• 2002/04/18 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A5-0128/2002
• 2001/09/03 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• #2352
• 2001/05/31 Council Meeting
• 2001/05/02 Non-legislative basic document published
  • COM(2001)0231 summary

    PURPOSE : to build an effective partnership with the United Nations in the fields of Development and Humanitarian Affairs. CONTENT : relations between the United Nations and the European Union have grown over time into a rich and diverse network of co-operation and contacts. Relations are strong and complex and they now cover virtually all areas of EU external relations, spanning the entire scope of the UN Charter from peace, security, human rights to social and economic affairs, including development and humanitarian activities and trade policy. Improving co-operation with the UN is a major priority to the EU, to its Member States and to the European Commission. The Commission considers that a first step in the direction of a more effective partnership could be taken by enhancing collaboration in the fields of development and humanitarian affairs. The Commission is convinced that the quality and impact of EC development and humanitarian policies and activities can be improved by better clarifying what the Community's role should be in the UN context and what it suggests to contribute to the multilateral system. That positive impact can however only be achieved if on the other hand the Commission specifies what it expects from the partners in the United Nations system. The new strategy for improved co-operation with the United Nations relies upon and benefits from the ongoing overhaul of the Commission's system of operations in the field of external activities (strengthening of the programming process, de-concentration and decentralisation, result-based approach). It pre-supposes increased co-ordination between Member States and the Commission, namely in the international fora and within partner countries. Finally, it is based on the concept of increased complementarity both between the Community and its Member States and the Community and the United Nations. The main goals of the proposed strategy are to strengthen the involvement of the EC in the upstream policy dialogue and to build a more transparent, financially predictable and easier to monitor partnership with chosen UN agencies, funds and programmes. The Commission intends come back to the overall EU/UN relationship and to closer co-operation in the fields of conflict prevention and crisis management in a later Communication, incorporating the conclusions from the current reflection on EC-UN co-operation in the development and humanitarian fields. The Commission has already started discussions with the UN Secretariat · as well as with some specialised Agencies of the UN · on the revision of the existing agreements. In the framework of applicable Community rules, the Commission has started and will continue: · to acknowledge the specific nature of the UN and to follow its procedures, which meet the requirements of other donors, provided that they do not contradict the requirements of Community rules such as verification andproper reporting; · to favour an approach more oriented towards outputs than inputs (such as simplification in terms of definition of eligible costs; explicit provision calling for contracts to aim at well-defined objectives, the attainment of which can be demonstrated by adequate reporting; final payment and financing of new operations dependant on proper performance).�

  • DG ['Development'],

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: COM(2001)0231
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A5-0128/2002
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T5-0257/2002

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)