Speech by

H.E. David Daly, Ambassador and Head of Delegation of the European Union to Australia and to New Zealand

New Zealand and the European Union Shared Interests: Meeting the Challenge. Special Focus: Promoting Sustainable Development in the South Pacific

Date & Time: 5.30pm Monday 5 October 2009
Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Rutherford Housel, Pipitea Campus, Victoria University of Wellington

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

It is again a pleasure to be here, to speak to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs in Wellington. Thank you to Brian Lynch for the invitation and his organisation.

Thank you also to Peter Adams for his introduction. Peter, although I arrived only this year and did not have many opportunities to work with you so far, your reputation precedes you.

Your knowledge and experience in the field of development makes it a special honour to be introduced by you.

For me, it is both an increased pleasure and an increased challenge to talk about sustainable development in the Pacific with my colleagues - H.E. Mr Wiepke van der Goot, Head of Delegation to the South Pacific and H.E. Mr. Aldo dell'Ariccia, Head of Delegation to Papua New Guinea .

On the one hand it is immensely satisfying to work as a team with one's colleagues.

But in comparison to them, my work on development is meagre - it is Wiepke and Aldo and their teams who have the direct, day-to-day responsibility of building development and relations in the Pacific and they understand it far more comprehensively than I do.

Yet it is completely appropriate that I should share the stage with them. My ambit is relations and cooperation with Australia and New Zealand .

The Pacific and its development is a key intersection of our interests. We hold the same ambitions for the region and share the same values on how to achieve our ambitions. As well, more can be done to further improve our cooperation and collaboration on development and relations in this region.

This is the rationale for the trilateral discussions which the Commission is holding tomorrow with New Zealand and Australia. They were inaugurated last year in Canberra, hosted by Australia and this the second round is being held in Wellington, ably hosted by New Zealand 's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

These trilateral conversations were the initiative of my predecessor, Bruno Julien, who saw the need for the largest donors to the Pacific to meet, compare notes on development and improve regional development collaboration. He was right.

It is particularly important that we three partners, having such similar and shared values, do harmonise our cooperation. Our end intentions are the same - our means should dovetail as much as possible.

By increasing our cooperation I believe we will prove the old adage that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

We plan to achieve this aim by bringing together not only three donors, but also representatives from our headquarters and, where possible, our Delegations, Embassies or High Commissions.

For the European Commission, this means that 6 out of the 8 delegations to the Pacific are represented here; plus two representatives from Brussels including Commission Director of Development and Relations with the Pacific, Roger Moore; and the European Investment Bank.

It is a large contingent and it is signifies our commitment to the region and to getting aid right.

We are here to talk shop. But we seek concrete solutions. The disastrous tsunami in Samoa last week - a natural disaster - paints a sombre backdrop to our discussions with New Zealand and Australia tomorrow.

Whether from a natural disaster or from increasingly frequent climate change weather extremes,

• we are reminded that the island countries of the Pacific are particularly vulnerable;
• we are reminded that that we need to put the environment at the heart of our aid programmes;
• we are reminded that whatever we can do together with other donor partners will multiply the impact of all our programmes, for the benefit of the region.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have given you some background to development in the Pacific by the European Commission, New Zealand and Australia and the value of the trilateral discussions tomorrow.

I will now turn the floor over to my colleagues, who will go into further detail on the "how" to promote sustainable development in the Pacific.

This page updated November 18, 2009