STATEMENT TO THE INAUGURAL SESSION OF THE 10TH ACP-EU JOINT PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY BY THE ACP CO-PRESIDENT MRS. SHARON HAY- WEBSTER EDINBURGH 21 NOVEMBER, 2005 Your Royal Highness, the Duke of Gloucester Honorable Members of Government The Right Honorable George Reid, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament Lady Glenys Kinnock, EU Co-President of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly Colleague Parliamentarians Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen 1 So often have we heard of the majestic beauty of Edinburgh, that despite the other feature for which this city is renown, its early wintry chill, my ACP Colleagues and I have long looked forward to being here. Though the beauty remains unquestionable, that chill has been diminished by the warmth of the reception lavished on us. And might I add that it was not only the warmth of intellectual stimulation which we enjoyed yesterday at the Whisky-on-the-rocks reception at Our Dynamic Earth. On behalf of the ACP Members of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, I am therefore very pleased to express to the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, the Right Honorable Lesley Hinds, our sincere appreciation of the warm hospitality we have enjoyed since our arrival here. I would also like to thank you, Your Worship , the Mayor of Edinburgh, for your kind words of welcome. Through you, Sir, let me also express our gratitude to the distinguished members of your team. We appreciate your dedicated efforts to ensure that we are all provided with the excellent facilities which are essential to the successful outcome for this Assembly. Your Royal Highness, Madame Co-President We meet here at a time when the global community faces numerous challenges, when Parliamentarians no longer have the luxury of dwelling only on parochial and national concerns. The reality of the global village brings the imperatives for and the threats to peace, security and development to our very doorstep. Our Joint Parliamentary Assembly is just one part of the global search for durable solutions. In a partnership centred on human dignity and mutual respect, Parliamentarians representing 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the 25 EU member states focus our combined expertise and energies on that search. We come not merely as leaders in our own right, but as elected representatives of the peoples whom we are called to serve. Our objective cannot be the expansion of personal prestige and power, but, through shared experience of best practice, to contribute to enhancing the welfare of our peoples, especially of the most vulnerable. Indeed, the essence of our work is all about people; it is about putting our personal baggage aside and coming to the dialogue table with an open mind and a hunger for equity and justice; for peaceful, negotiated solutions to the problems we confront. So we come to Scotland, not with a clean slate, but with an agenda already crowded with critical issues which demand our attention and appropriate action. Natural Disasters and Climate Change It is here that we shall review the report of the Committee on Social Affairs and the Environment, on the causes and consequences of natural disasters. This is a timely debate which I hope will encourage us to take the lead, at our respective national levels, to secure a more pro-active response to climate change and to promote action for mitigating the impact of natural disasters. When we recall how many ACP states, as well as several 2 from Europe, have suffered from various forms of natural disasters over the last year alone; when we remember the dreadful calamities of the Tsunami and the earthquakes in Asia, the hurricanes in the US, the famine in several African states; in the face of dire warnings of increasingly intense and frequent natural disasters, we dare not ignore the call to action. The Report that over 80% of the planet's ecosystems are degraded or used unsustainably is indeed chilling. The projections are at best intimidating, and may I say, pose a serious threat to the very basic fibre of our political democracies. Here in this bonny site in the United Kingdom, it is fitting to reflect on the UK Presidency’s role at the next UN Climate Change negotiations in December this year. Theirs will be the important task of helping to develop a post 2012 strategy to foster, inter alia, closer international engagement with the growing economies of China and India. As Parliamentarians, I am glad to say that we had the foresight to invest our efforts in the timely formulation of a joint Declaration on Climate Change and the Impact of Natural Disasters. We hope that the UK Presidency will take on board the positions which we shall formally adopt at this session. It is against this background that we highlight and welcome the newly created ACP-EU Natural Disaster Facility. Though launched with an initial, small capital of EUR 12 million to be disbursed for enhancing disaster preparedness and early warning systems in ACP countries, we expect that it will be much better funded and enabled to respond to the priorities for which it was created. I urge you, Colleague Parliamentarians of the ACP and the EU, to continue to be vigilant in support of this Facility. Our attention and vigilance are necessary if our policy makers are to be successful both in the pre-disaster and the post-catastrophic rehabilitation and reconstruction of our affected states. The role of National Parliaments in the implementation of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement The relevance of the Parliamentary debate on the role of national parliaments in the implementation of the Cotonou Partnership is self evident. I encourage and expect active participation in this discussion which will have the added advantage of improving our interaction and political dialogue with the civil society and the economic and social partners in our respective states. For the ACP parliamentarians, these discussions will further strengthen our on-going efforts to achieve excellence at the level of the ACP Parliamentary Consultative Assembly. Political and economic issues 3 Another important concern on this session’s agenda is the political situation in West Africa, in particular in Guinea Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo and Mauritania. Though these are the conflict situations on which we shall focus at this session, we cannot forget the continuing internal and cross border conflicts among several other ACP states. This is why the ACP Consultative Assembly accepted my proposal to create a permanent working group to strengthen our capacity to perform our conflict mitigation role, in keeping with our Charter. Peace and security are the cornerstones of people-centred development. It is my hope that our dialogue will contribute to the efforts to promote peace, security and stability in these affected countries and regions. An item of great importance, the Report on Agricultural and Mining commodities, has justifiably received the attention of the Committee on Economic Development, Finance and Trade. The strategic importance of the future of our minerals and our agricultural commodities, is unquestionable. For this reason we wish to encourage the European Commission and the Joint Council of Ministers to pursue bilateral and multilateral initiatives to ensure price stability and fair prices for these key primary products which are fundamental to the economic prospects of our countries. As we monitor the negotiations for the regional economic partnership agreements, we reiterate our concern that they indeed be development centred and that the policy be coherently demonstrated across all pertinent areas of the European Commission. In this context, I look forward, with keen interest, to receiving the European Commission’s update on the current mid-term review of the regional cooperation process in our ACP regions, and to engage actively in the discussion of its impact on the EPA negotiation process. Madame Co-President, It is extremely important that we consistently remind ourselves that the Cotonou Partnership Agreement is a binding contract between the countries we represent. It binds us as partners in the JPA, both at parliamentary and multiparty levels to centre our collaboration on the eradication of poverty. The spirit of our exemplary partnership is people centred. I make this observation in light of the ongoing debates on reforms which impact on the ACP/EU Commodity Protocols under the Partnership Agreement. The manner in which the agreements on our commodities is being handled is strikingly different from the spirit which motivated their adoption. Then what was uppermost was the principle of promoting development through fair trade which recognised the vulnerabilities and constraints of the ACP economies. These Protocols are evidence of the EU’s commitment to special and differential treatment for developing countries long before other developed countries recognised this as an essential component in fair trade. Today, even as the Doha Development Round is teetering on the brink of failure at Hong Kong and in the aftermath of global recommitment to the Millennium Development Goals, the principle which drives the EC reforms is not development through fair trade, but compliance with the WTO. As it now stands, the free trade espoused by the WTO, is 4 not necessarily fair trade. ACP economies which benefit from their commodity exports to the EU markets know that especially now, in respect of their cotton, sugar and banana industries. My ACP Colleagues and I are very pleased that our European partners in the JPA share our concerns and have even lobbied intensively on our behalf. But the struggle is far from over. The European Union must internalise our message that this is all about people. Their policy decisions with regard to ACP commodity trade impact on the very chance of survival of hundreds of thousands of small farmers and rural communities.