2.4 Bases Teóricas
2.4.2 La Responsabilidad Social Empresarial
The Community was active not just at international level in supporting the Boerma plan or at least some of its essential policies. The Commission was dealing with the most serious food crises and making specific proposals to the Council on the Community’s food aid policy. Within the framework of the Food Aid Convention, which was part of the Kennedy Round, the European Community and the Member States committed themselves to contributing food aid amounting to 1 287 000 tonnes of cereals in the 1973/74 campaign, and thousands of tonnes of other food products under other international agreements450.
There was, however, the problem of a lack of coordination between Community and Member State actions, in addition to the problem of increasing food aid.
The European Parliament focused on these issues, supporting the efforts made by the Commission to achieve better coordination of aid, while calling for the establishment of basic common principles for a long-term food aid strategy. In particular, Parliament welcomed the efforts by the Commission to separate food aid policy from agricultural policy, stressing above all that food aid could not be considered a definitive solution absolving the Community of its duty to address the cause and effect chain linking unemployment, poverty, low spending power, low demand for food products and malnutrition451.
449 EP resolution of 14 November 1975 on results and effects of the World Food Conference (Rome - 5 to 15 November 1974) and on
the position of the Community on world food policy, OJ C 280, 08/12/1975 p. 65.
450 EP – Committee on Development and Cooperation - Doc. 171/74. Op. cit.
451 EP resolution of 12 July 1974 embodying Parliament’s opinion on the proposal from the Commission of the European Communities
Food aid management was unsatisfactory, as a report452 drawn up some years later would
show. The report underlined critical points, the first of which was the long decision- making process, taking from two to seven months and requiring Council deliberations even on the details, all of which slowed up aid distribution. In fact, 82% of 1976 aid was only distributed in the following year and 60% of 1977 aid was distributed in 1978. This situation also generated protests on the part of the beneficiary states. The report related to a Commission proposal aimed at speeding up decision-making and it was approved by Parliament with some serious reservations concerning the legal basis and the classification of expenditure453. A subsequent Commission proposal with a similar aim was approved
by Parliament in its resolution of 16 March 1979454.
The improvements introduced rendered Community action more effective but did not prevent – and indeed were not aimed at preventing – a further deterioration of the global situation. This situation was linked to the broader problem of underdevelopment in another resolution455, which called on the Commission and the Council to establish a
proper agricultural and food policy in line with the conclusions of an FAO conference held in July 1979. Above all, it called for additional appropriations to be allocated to food aid. It was followed in 1980 by the more substantial resolution on the European Community’s contribution to the campaign to eliminate hunger in the world456. The relevant committee
report457 took as its starting point a deep-seated, and at the time wide-spread, conviction
about the causes of hunger:
Without question this situation is the result above all of the faulty development of agriculture and more generally of the economies of these countries. The fact that many developing countries have specialised in the production of one or more agricultural raw materials destined for export has not only come about to the detriment of crops destined for the internal market and the food needs of local inhabitants, but has also made these countries doubly dependent on the international market where prices are to a great degree controlled by a few multinational companies and are vulnerable to fluctuation due to speculation.
On the basis of these considerations, the resolution called for a profound change in the production methods and way of life of industrialised countries, the reallocation to development of a portion of the arms expenditure, and the transfer of financial and
452 EP – Committee on Development and Cooperation- Report on the communication from the Commission of the European
Communities to the Council (Doc. 237/78) on procedures for the management of food aid. Doc. 414/78. Rap: Lezzi. This was the second version of the report (Doc. 320/78) with the same title that Parliament had transmitted to the Commission on 12 October 1978.
453 EP resolution of 14 November 1978 embodying Parliament’s opinion on the communication from the Commission of the European
Communities to the Council on procedures for the management of food aid, OJ C 296, 11.12.78, p. 16. The question raised and any reservations expressed are dealt with in the next paragraph.
454 EP resolution of 16 March 1979 embodying the opinion of the European Parliament on the proposals from the Commission of the
European Communities to the Council for I. a Regulation on the management of food aid; II. a Regulation amending Regulations (EEC) No 2052/69, (EEC) No 1703/72 and (EEC) No 2681/74 on Community financing of expenditure incurred in respect of the supply of agricultural products as food aid, and repealing Decision 72/335/EEC, OJ C 93, 9.4.79, p. 75 following on from the report of the Committee on Development and Cooperation with the same title. Doc. 669/78. Rap: Lezzi.
455 EP resolution of 16 November 1979 on hunger in the world, OJ C 309, 10.12.79, p. 42. The motion for a resolution was tabled by the
members of the Committee on Development and Cooperation.
456 EP resolution of 18 September 1980, OJ C 265, 13.10.80, p. 37.
457 EP – Committee on Development and Cooperation - Report on the European Community’s contribution to the campaign to
technological resources to less favoured regions and countries. Specifically, the European Parliament called on the Community to support international mechanisms for allocating oil revenues, an extension of the competences of the World Bank, refinancing of the International Monetary Fund, and utilisation of IMF resources taking into account the specific nature of the developing countries. In particular, it called on the Commission to make funds available for the refinancing of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The European Parliament paid special attention to specific Community operations promoting rural development, and called for adequate financial and technical assistance to allow developing countries to design their own food strategies independently, thereby avoiding the risk that efforts to support the non-associated developing countries would have a negative impact on those to support the ACP countries. The new importance of rural development was underlined by the fact that it came to be seen as linked to food aid, which should take agricultural and rural development into account.
Two years later Parliament monitored the extent to which its resolutions had been applied, in particular that of 18 September 1980458. The new resolution was a large and timely
document, and the relevant report described the measures adopted by the Commission. The resolution defended the usefulness and, above all, the viability of its position over the two-year period, regretting, however, in the light of the steady deterioration in the food situation, that the implementing decisions had fallen short of what was called for in Parliament’s proposals and resolutions. It called on the Member States to contribute 0.15% of their GDP by 1985 to the least developed countries, to establish a timetable for achieving as soon as possible the goal of donating 0.7% of their GDP to development, and to present concrete proposals for combating hunger in the world within the framework of North-South dialogue. Furthermore, it called on the Commission to support the planning of food strategies, country by country, in addition to other more specific measures.
Further criticism had been formulated two months previously in a resolution adopting a position on a report by the Court of Auditors on food aid policies459. In this resolution
the European Parliament stated that the Community was not yet in a position to take a decisive role in combating hunger in the world, both because it lacked an overall vision of development policy and because food aid was too oriented towards the needs of the European agricultural market, prioritising the disposal of existing internal agricultural surpluses. Furthermore, there was no exact definition of the functions, the objectives of food aid action, or the procedures to be implemented for such aid, nor had there ever been a satisfactory analysis of the results achieved. This led to an unplanned and casual approach that prevented the best possible use of aid funding. In order to remedy this situation, the resolution proposed that the general guidelines for the multiannual plans should be adopted by the Council acting by a qualified majority, following a proposal from the Commission and an opinion from Parliament. It also recommended that the expenditure be classified as non-compulsory and that the Commission implement the
458 EP resolution of 17 June 1982 on measures following the European Parliament’s debate on world hunger, the communication from
the Commission to the Council concerning a plan of action to combat world hunger and the motions for resolutions tabled on this subject, OJ C 182, 19.7.82, p. 76 following on from the report of the Committee on Development and Cooperation with the same title. Doc. 1-281/82 corr. Rap: V. Michel. Most of the resolutions and reports on the annual regulations on food aid raised the same problem, this resolution doing so in most detail.
459 EP resolution of 20 April 1982 on problems in the implementation of Community food aid policy in the light of the report of the
Court of Auditors, OJ C 125, 17.5.82, p. 40 following on from the report of the Committee on Budgetary Control with the same title. Doc. 1-98/82. Rap: U. Irmer.
measures autonomously and take responsibility for them. A resolution was also adopted on a proposal for a regulation that is dealt with below.
Parliament did, however, view the special programme to combat hunger positively460. It
established a dedicated budgetary line for 1983 that Parliament very strongly supported. The resolution was the first application of the joint declaration of 30 June 1982 that had seen the three political institutions improve their budgetary procedures. It also supported food strategies in the beneficiary countries, providing funding for agriculture throughout the productive cycle.
The actions supporting agrarian reform in the non-associated countries of Central America were a particular example of
Community intervention. The special action proposed by the Commission came under two headings: immediate aid supporting imports and specific aid for agrarian reform, which was regarded as an essential step towards restoring food self-sufficiency in these countries. The European Parliament’s response was broadly positive and it proposed a number of key objectives: restructuring the economy in the countries in question, improving agriculture in order to achieve food self-sufficiency and promoting industrialisation in the farming sector461.
The least developed countries were another special case and the Commission proposed a specific regulation on exceptional food aid for them. Parliament welcomed this initiative462, but warned that this
exceptional aid should not lead to a reduction in ordinary aid. There was also an institutional question: the
460 EP resolution of 15 April 1983 closing the procedure for consultation of the European Parliament on a proposal from the
Commission of the European Communities to the Council for a Regulation on the implementation of the special programme to combat hunger in the world, OJ C 128, 16.5.83 p. 109 following on from the report of the Committee on Development and Cooperation. Doc. 1-114/83. Rap: M. Cassanmagnago Ceretti.
461 EP resolution of 19 November 1982 on the communication from the Commission of the European Communities to the Council
concerning special action in favour of the economic and social development of Central America and closing the procedure for consultation of the European Parliament on the proposal from the Commission of the European Communities to the Council for a Decision completing the general guidelines for 1982 concerning financial and technical aid to non-associated developing countries, OJ C 334, 20.12.82, p. 128 following on from the report from the Committee on Development and Cooperation with the same title. Doc. 1-784/82. Rap: V. Michel.
462 EP resolution of 16 December 1981 embodying the opinion of the European Parliament on a proposal from the Commission of
the European Communities to the Council for a Regulation concerning an exceptional food aid for the least developed countries (LDCs), OJ C 11, 18.1.82 p. 42 following on from the report of the Committee on Development and Cooperation with the same title. Doc. 1-817/81 Rap: R. Cohen.
Food aid for Sudan. Sudan was one of the first countries to receive food aid in the 1970s.
European Parliament, unlike the Council, which had brought pressure to bear on the Commission, was of the opinion that these measures did not require a specific regulation, something that had caused it to reject the proposal on an earlier occasion.