§ Mr. Matthew TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development if she will make a statement on the findings of the Environmental Resources Management report of March 1997, Evaluation of Environmental Performance of EC Programmes in Developing Countries. [41108]
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§ Mr. FoulkesThe report, entitledEvaluation of the Environmental Performance of EC Programmes in Developing Countries, was recently published and distributed by the European Commission. The evaluation is acknowledged within and outside the Commission to have been a very useful exercise, which presents detailed findings and recommendations on aspects of policy and practice.
We are waiting for the Commission's response to the report. We then intend to monitor follow-up work and examine ways in which we can assist the Commission in their efforts. However, the Commission is reorganising its foreign policy services in order to rationalise and streamline policy formulation and implementation. This reorganisation can be expected to address many issues raised by the report. In particular, the Commission's capacity to implement recommendations should be strengthened as manpower and technical resource deficiencies are addressed. The Commission is also in the process of substantially revising its Environment Manual for development assistance. We welcome this positive action and would urge the commission to continue in this direction.