Activities of Michèle RIVASI related to 2021/2158(DEC)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh European Development Funds for the financial year 2020
Amendments (14)
Amendment 3 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Draws attention to the context in which official development assistance (ODA) is now provided, marked by a recurrent funding gap, the COVID pandemic, the aggravating climate and biodiversity crisis, the relentless growth of the needs of humanitarian aid, developing countries’ and lack of means to address them properly, developing countries’, notably the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) woefully inadequate financial and othertechnical resources to respond to the challenges they face, the reversal of the progress towards key Sustainable Development Goals, including those to eradicate poverty and hunger, and the continued global failure to scale up climate action to the urgent need of reaching the objectives of the Paris Agreement with a pathway compatible with the objective of limiting global warming to under 1,5°C as well as improving resilience to adverse climate change impacts;
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Insists that the Union and its Member States scale up their ODA and climate finance so as to honour their commitments, that maximum efficiency of the spending be sought according to the principle of aid effectiveness and partner country ownership, that policy coherence for development (PCD) be practiced in a more convincingefficient and systematic way and that new efforts to create an enabling international environment for domestic resource mobilisation (DRM) be made; takes the view that well-functioning PCD and support for DRM should be considered part and parcel of sound financial management as these are means to increase the efficiency of EU action which do not need to imply significant additional costs to the Union budgetimply concrete initiatives, such as supporting the fight against corruption and the development of progressive tax systems, tackling tax avoidance and evasion;
Amendment 16 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Expresses disappointment about the continued absence of major action by the Commission on the recommendations of the external evaluation of the Union’s PCD1 , ordered by the Commission and received in 2018; _________________ 1 https://ec.europa.eu/international- partnerships/system/files/pcd-main- report_en.pdfstresses that more efforts must be undertaken to comply with PCD principles, especially for the Union trade, agricultural, fisheries, environment, climate, migration, foreign and security policies, in order to achieve aid effectiveness objectives; reiterates that PCD must be an important objective of the joined-up approach designed in NDICI-Global Europe; reiterates its call for an in-depth analysis on the impact of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) on local economies and intra- regional trade to address concerns about their implementation in terms of regional integration and industrialisation;
Amendment 22 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Notes that the budgetary implementation of the EDF is now limited to payments on commitments made before the 31 December 2020 end date and that Global Europe - NDICI and general Union budget rules now apply; calls for strict implementation of the human rights based approach, with human rights being at the centre of all actions, in accordance with the Commission’s toolbox on this approach. ; in this regard, is particularly concerned about the possible misuse of development funds for mobility restriction and border control purposes, including those of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), and the reported human rights violations linked to the EUTF in Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Niger;
Amendment 24 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4 a. Reiterates its calls for proper implementation of and reporting on all horizontal spending targets set in NDICI, in particular the biodiversity related target which is not a stand-alone target in the regulation but concerns contributing to the overall MFF biodiversity target of 7.5% of annual spending to biodiversity objectives in 2024 and 10% from 2026 onwards; expects the Commission to adopt as soon as possible an effective, transparent and comprehensive methodology for biodiversity tracking, developed with the full involvement of the European Parliament, and about which the European Parliament should be consulted before the publication of the 2023 draft budget;
Amendment 28 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 b (new)
Paragraph 4 b (new)
4 b. Stresses that projects financed via NDICI-Global Europe shall be screened to determine if they have an environmental, climate or social impact and if so, shall be subject to climate, environmental and social sustainability proofing with a view to minimise detrimental impacts and maximise benefits on climate, environment and social dimensions; recalls that the Union and the Member States committed under Article2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement to align both public and private financial flows to a pathway compatible with the objective of limiting global warming to 1.5°C; stresses that this requires a phase out of all direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies as soon as possible and by 2025 at the very latest;
Amendment 31 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 c (new)
Paragraph 4 c (new)
4 c. Regrets the reported case of lack of transparency for the work contracts signed by the Commission to strengthen food security in Cameroon, for which the evaluation criteria used for the award differed from those published in the tender notice and therefore made the tender ineligible; calls on the Commission to prevent any lack of transparency in public procurement procedures;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 d (new)
Paragraph 4 d (new)
4 d. Regrets that expenditures with international organisations recorded in 2020 under the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th EDFs is particularly affected by errors; highlights that errors occur predominantly in transactions related to grants and to contribution and delegation agreements implemented by international organisations and that in the examined transactions of this type, 40.3 % contained quantifiable errors, which is substantial; underlines that the ECA1a indicated that for 13 of these cases with errors, the Commission had sufficient information to prevent, or to detect the error before accepting the expenditure; urges the Commission to produce detailed explanations in response to these findings and to submit a clear plan to European Parliament outlining the necessary steps in order to correct this seriously worrying situation; _________________ 1a https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADoc uments/annualreports- 2020/annualreports-2020_EN.pdf
Amendment 35 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 e (new)
Paragraph 4 e (new)
4 e. Calls on the Commission to take the necessary measures to ensure that international organisations provide the Court of Auditors with complete, unlimited and timely access to documents necessary to carry out its task in accordance with the TFEU1a, and not just in read-only format; _________________ 1a Article 287 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union: ‘Any natural or legal person in receipt of payments from the budget, shall forward to the Court of Auditors, at its request, any document or information necessary to carry out its task'.
Amendment 37 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 f (new)
Paragraph 4 f (new)
4 f. Stresses the importance for donors to prioritise grant-based financing as the default option, especially to LDCs, and not favour blending, guarantee or any loans over grants, that could increase the burden of debt; is concerned therefore that the Commission has proposed more means and geographical expansion for blended finance for the future financing period 2021-2027 via EFSD+ in NDICI- Global Europe, and through the Global Gateway strategy, which makes of the blending-guarantee mechanism the main financial tool for mobilising investments; urges the Union and its Member States to develop, as a first step, and in addition to its pledges on debt moratorium, a new debt relief initiative regarding the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries; more broadly, calls for the creation of a multilateral debt workout mechanism to address both the impact of the crisis and the financing requirements of the Agenda 2030;
Amendment 78 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 64 a (new)
Paragraph 64 a (new)
64 a. Is concerned that as a follow-up to the EDF’s 2018 discharge report the Commission hasn’t fully taken into consideration Parliament’s numerous recommendations related to the EUTF; observes with great concern that to the opposite of helping to address these causes of destabilisation, the EUTF funds are increasingly being spent to help close borders, stiffen migration and push for returns of migrants back to Africa;
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 66 a (new)
Paragraph 66 a (new)
66 a. Is particularly alarmed that EDF funds are used by the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) to finance the development of biometric identity systems in African countries. These funds are used to train the authorities of these countries (Senegal, Ivory Coast) in controversial surveillance techniques, equipped with intrusive surveillance tools without any prior assessment of the risks and the impact on human rights, including any privacy or data protection assessment;
Amendment 84 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 66 b (new)
Paragraph 66 b (new)
66 b. Takes note that the European Ombudsman opened the investigation into the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa on 30 November 2021, following a complain filled by a coalition of the EU NGOs; notes also that the Ombudsman expects a response from the Commission by 10th March 2022 on her question whether the Commission has carried out human rights risk assessments before engaging in activities that help third countries to develop surveillance capacities under the EUTF and, if not, why the Commission considers that such assessments are not necessary;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 71 a (new)
Paragraph 71 a (new)
71 a. Reiterates its calls to the Commission to provide a solid risk assessment study on the human rights implication for all the projects designed to train and equip security forces of the African countries;