Statement van Thijs tijdens de hoorzitting van Rumiana Jeleva
Op dinsdag 12 januari zei Thijs het volgende tijdens zijn eerste statement:
Welcome, Mrs Jeleva. We – and you – are faced with a huge organisational mess. Development policy is being dismembered under the torturous process of the division of portfolios between too many European Commissioners.
The development cooperation instruments seem to be for Lady Ashton, the European Development Fund for Mr Piebalgs – albeit with EuropeAid – and you would be dealing with some leftovers, including humanitarian aid – action mainly aimed at developing countries. Three cabinets: it is a recipe for internal conflict and a lack of coherence outwards.
Instead of creating a strong and unified role for the EU in poverty reduction, Mr Barroso seems to persist in perpetuating our divisions. The ECI, EDF and humanitarian aid should ideally merge under one Commissioner responsible for all programming. We all agree that the EDF has to be within the EU budget, but Mr Barroso ignores this in the portfolios.
I do not expect you to clarify this mess, but how will you guarantee that funding for humanitarian aid does not go up in the smoke of European wood fires? How will you ensure the neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian aid? How will you ensure the close link and complementarity of humanitarian aid with subsequent development?
But perhaps, Mrs Jeleva, before we start our discussion, you would like to first clarify why, contrary to the rules of the European Parliament, as an MEP you did not mention your mention your position as manager of your consultancy firm in your 2008 and 2009 declarations of interests.
