The first National Cooperation Forum, to be held tomorrow and Tuesday in Milan, will offer the Italian Cooperation an important opportunity for reflection and reinforcement. New global challenges call for effective responses, and institutions have the duty to stimulate and involve public opinion in the strategic importance of development cooperation policies. The difficult present international economic\/financial situation, and the political and social tensions in various parts of the world, foreground the urgency of strengthening awareness that cooperation is a moral imperative in today\u2019s world and an investment in the future. This goes for everyone, and in particular for Italy, traditionally engaged at the level of promoting that international stability and justice on which our prosperity depends.<\/P>
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Cooperation is a strategic asset for the defence and promotion of Italy\u2019s interests, especially national security, migration management, climate change and energy security; as well as to promote new opportunities for collaboration between the public and private sectors, and to ensure our country an adequate profile in the main international settings and full participation in the international governance of major global challenges. Development cooperation is, now more than ever, a major qualifying element in our country\u2019s foreign policy; today more than ever it is foreign policy. We are living in a \u201cpolycentric\u201d and multi-dimensional world, where the cooperation scenario is changing. Many of the countries in the South of the world are becoming leaders in economic growth and social promotion processes, and are establishing partnerships on an equal footing. This is the case of emerging economies, large-scale businesses, foundations, local bodies with international market aspirations and the civil society.<\/P>
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The concept of a richer country \u201cdonating\u201d aid to a poorer one in exchange for immediate advantages is one that belongs to the past. Interdependence and, even more so, the need to promote sustainable development, is leading rather to modern forms of partnership with mutual benefits and shared advantages for the growth of respective economies. The framework of reference for development cooperation, while respecting national prerogatives, cannot but be Europe\u2019s: the EU is the world\u2019s number one donor: more than fifty per cent of the Official Development Assistance distributed to developing countries comes from Europe. The Treaty of Lisbon places development cooperation policies at the centre of the EU\u2019s actions within the context of an overall consistency in the protection of the Union\u2019s values, fundamental interests, security, independence and integrity. The EU\u2019s development cooperation policy and that of its Member States is completed and strengthened reciprocally and needs continuing coordination. Italy is deeply committed to defining and executing European development policies, not least with the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of national efforts as much as possible at the time of shrinking resources. We are working on having Community resources earmarked more and more for the countries in transition along the southern shores of the Mediterranean in the wake of the Arab Spring. <\/P>
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Europe has recognised the quality and experience of the Italian Cooperation. We are collaborating concretely with the European Commission is such a way that will allow us to directly administer Community funds in carrying out cooperation projects. This is an extraordinary opportunity for institutions, businesses and NGOs to participate in the EU\u2019s system of development assistance.<\/P>
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In the same way, Italy must create a system, ensuring that unified conception of development cooperation policy indispensable to the effectiveness of our efforts around the world and to our active participation in the processes of change. Today, more then ever before, it is necessary to strengthen coordination among the actors in the national cooperation system in order to ensure that our actions are consistent and inclusive. I am confident that a reinvigorated commitment to this will emerge from the Milan Forum; it is the only possible path at this difficult financial moment marked by a need for reduced public spending, which nevertheless does not prevent us from outlining an ambitious and effective development assistance policy; and one that, above all, involves young people who believe in the values of international cooperation \u2013 we all need their enthusiasm and ideas in order to renew and strengthen Italy\u2019s cooperation efforts. <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first National Cooperation Forum, to be held tomorrow and Tuesday in Milan, will offer the Italian Cooperation an important opportunity for reflection and reinforcement. New global challenges call for effective responses, and institutions have the duty to stimulate and involve public opinion in the strategic importance of development cooperation policies. The difficult present international […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[29,76],"class_list":["post-24441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviste","tag-cooperazione-sviluppo","tag-ministri-precedenti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}