Nirj Deva is the Vice President Development Committee EU Parliament .
Interview of the 12th July 2011 at the EU Parliament, Brussels, Belgium
Nirj Deva
Vice President Development Committee
EU Parliament
Brussels, July 2011
The rationality of EU Development Cooperation Policy
We need to explain to the taxpayer,
because after all it the donor is the taxpayer:
Italian taxpayer the British taxpayer the German and French taxpayer,
twenty-seven member states taxpayers ....
We are not only trying to be good people,
charitable:
actually this is not charity:
it is in our interest,
it is in our interest of
every single citizen of Europe,
and of European Nations,
to help people in our neighborhood
(I mean the different parts of the world)
to be better off,
less poor,
less ill
because we live
in a interdependent world.
Our purpose is not to give a handout,
but to give a hand up;
not to give the fish, but to give the fishing nets.
So they can catch the fish.
And that should be the
rationale
of our development policy