Côte d'Ivoire: ACP-EU Assembly refuses to recognise Gbagbo's victory

Election results announced on Friday by Côte d’Ivoire’s Constitutional Council were "contrary to the will expressed by the Ivorian people through the ballot box", said the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, which refused to recognise them. The fight against illegal exploitation of "blood minerals" in Africa and worsening standards of media freedom were also among the topics considered by the 20th ACP-EU Assembly which met in Kinshasa (D.R. Congo) from 2 to 4 December.

The ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly brings together 78 MEPs and 78 parliamentarians from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. 

Côte d'Ivoire

The Assembly adopted an urgent declaration condemning the Constitutional Council's decision to invalidate certain provisional results published by the Côte d'Ivoire Independent Electoral Commission and called on all the parties to "show maximum restraint".

The text, drafted by co-presidents Louis Michel (ALDE, BE) and David Matongo (Zambia), refused to recognise Gbagbo's victory. Mr Michel said that "the fact that the observers taking part in the EU Election Observation Mission were subjected to strong intimidation is unacceptable". He deeply regretted that the situation forced the team to leave Côte d'Ivoire.

EU law on "blood minerals"

Mr Michel called on Thursday for an EU law ensuring traceability of imported minerals, which would be a tool to fight the illegal exploitation of conflict minerals in African countries.  He was speaking at the opening ceremony in the presence of Congolese President Joseph Kabila.

  

"I urge the European Union to develop a law similar to the American bill which will help to heal the international market. It is still incomprehensible that the countries with the richest resources are those whose populations are the poorest". But he added: "It is not enough to give lessons to countries with resources, we must also assume our own responsibilities". Mr Michel was advocating a similar measure to the American Frank-Dodd Act, recently passed by Congress, which requires all companies listed on Wall Street as oil, gas and mining companies to publicly disclose their income and tax payments.

Urgency resolutions: situation in Sahel region and food security

Terrorism, human trafficking and drug dealing in the Sahel-Saharan region have dramatically increased and the international community needs to react to provide the necessary military, surveillance and technical support to the affected countries, stressed the assembly, in an urgent resolution adopted on Saturday. The region includes 4 million square kilometres covering parts of Mali, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Libya and Chad. EU and ACP parliamentarians called for the unconditional release of all international hostages held in the area.

Delegates adopted another urgent resolution on food security, in which they stressed that the right to food is "an inalienable and fundamental right" and also launched an international plea to tackle financial speculation in grain and food.

The 20th plenary session also included debates on the current political situation in D.R. Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Haiti.

Media freedom, Millennium Development Goals and climate change

The Assembly adopted three reports on:

-     Free and independent media, by Rainer Wieland (EPP-ED, DE) and Donald Ramotar (Guyana) which warns of the recent deterioration in media freedom in both developing and developed countries, with journalists being imprisoned or even murdered, and media outlets concentrated in a few multinational companies.

      Haiti, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Tanzania, Djibouti and Lesotho were congratulated for improving the situation of their media "despite difficult conditions".  However, the delegates voiced concern that only 10 of the 78 ACP countries were in the first 50 positions in rankings for freedom of the press, and "one EU Member State is outside the top 50".

-     Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: innovative responses, by Lucia Ronzulli (EPP-ED, IT) and Odirile Mothale (Botswana), which denounces the fact that the EU is currently some €20 billion short of its spending commitments in this field. The text urges developing countries to spend at least 15% of their national budgets on health care, particularly in maternal health, since scaling down maternal mortality is the most off-track of the millennium goals.

• Post-Copenhagen: technology transfer, new technologies and technical capacity-building in the ACP states, by Jo Leinen (S&D, DE) and Marlene Malahoo Forte (Jamaica), which stresses that the transfer of low carbon technologies towards most vulnerable countries, notably in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific areas, is a "key element of any effective international response" to the global challenge of climate change.