The 112^th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union

Second Standing Committee

Sustainable Development, Finance and Trade

 

 

The role of Parliaments in establishing innovative

international financing and trading mechanisms

to address the problem of debt and

achieve the Millennium Development Goals

 

                                   

Ionel PALĂR

Member of the Chamber of Deputies

Inter-Parliamentary Group of ROMANIA

 

 

 

 

Mr. President, 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

 

I would like, at the outset, to thank you for the opportunity of sharing some of my ideas, and to express my appreciation for the quality of our debates.

 

We are supportive of the steps taken so far to identify innovative international financing and trading mechanisms, which in our view should, first and foremost, provide long-term stability and predictability to foreign aid.

 

Romania, as a future Member of the European Union, will soon undertake the statute of ODA (Official Development Assistance) donor, preparing itself to allocate increased financial resources to the international cooperation for development.  

 

The enormous challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Goals requires a renewed commitment to improve the current development funding system. The New York Declaration on the Action Against Hunger and Poverty, signed also by Romania, is an important step forward.

 

Romania shares the view that each country has the primary responsibility for providing sound policies, solid institutions and an optimal mobilization of domestic resources, and that national policies have the leading role in the development process.

 

 

With the recent shift to country ownership of development programmes, national parliaments in developing countries have acquired increased responsibilities, which should be placed in the broader context of the commitments to democracy, human rights and sound and accountable governance.

 

These parliaments need assistance and support to improve their institutional capacity, thus enabling them to exercise effectively the legislative, oversight and budgetary functions related to the MDGs.

 

The success in achieving the development objectives depends on good governance not only within each country, but at the international level as well. Parliamentary involvement and inter-parliamentary cooperation are needed, here also, to promote the openness, fairness and inclusiveness of the international monetary, financial and trade systems.   

 

The unprecedented window of opportunity for the financing of development, opened at the beginning of this century, can only bear fruit if developing countries and countries with economies in transition participate effectively in international economic and financial decision-making and norm-setting processes, as well as in the efforts to reform the international financial architecture, as envisaged in the Monterrey Consensus.

 

Thank you for your attention.