European Parliament
A7-0010/2012
Franziska Keller,
on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group.
Mr President, coming back to development policies, we need to acknowledge that the BRICS countries are also new and increasingly important players in development policy. In fact, we should welcome this. We should try to include them in our international agreements on principles of development – including, for example, aid effectiveness principles – without using their inclusion as an excuse for watering down our own commitments.
We need to foster south-south cooperation because experience from, for example, Brazil on how to fight poverty has been very useful: the poverty reduction programmes that have been implemented in Brazil have been a great success, and now they are being implemented in other countries as well. Such proven best practices will be very important and they represent an important step for developing countries and societies.
Another crucial recommendation in the Committee on Development opinion is to push forward the reform of global financial and economic governance institutions – notably the Bretton Woods institutions – with the aim of ensuring broad representation of all member countries while reflecting changes in their economic weight. Can you tell us, Baroness Ashton, what steps the Commission and the EEAS intend to take in that regard?
We must also not forget that a large proportion of the world’s poorest people still live in the BRICS countries and therefore we cannot treat those countries as high-income countries. The EU-India free trade agreement, for instance, will have massive implications for India’s small farmers, fishermen, fisherwomen and other poor people. It is not right to look only at a country’s overall GDP because that is not a true reflection of the reality. We need to find new ways of dealing with emerging countries. Helping the poorest in these countries will continue to be necessary and important.
The Committee on Development also asked the Commission to define specific areas of cooperation with the BRICS countries in the field of development policy, for instance cooperation in the health sector, including access to basic healthcare services and infrastructure, the fight against AIDS and other matters. Maybe you could also give your view on that, Baroness Ashton, and tell us what steps you will be taking.
I will conclude with a word about our own position. Too often we have heard that what we are doing in developing countries may not be the greatest thing – but if we did not do it, China would come along and do it even worse. So I hope we will never hear that excuse again.

