The European Parliament,

A. whereas the Heads of State or Government signed the Lomé IV agreements in December 1989 and whereas eighteen months later, the Lomé IV Convention has still not been implemented owing to procedural delays occasioned by certain Member States,

B. whereas the ACP countries ratified the Convention by the appropriate time and in the correct form,

C. mindful of the desperate situation of a number of ACP States, particularly in Africa, and the need to use fully and as early as possible the Convention funds, insufficient though they are,

D. whereas the belated entry into force of Lomé IV has serious implications for the ACP countries, viz.:

(a) non-application of the transitional measures introduced by the EC for the new members of the ACP group: Haiti, Namibia and the Dominican Republic,

(b) difficulties with STABEX payments for 1990,

E. whereas the growing interest shown in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East must not lead to the neglect of long-standing ties and relations with other countries, in particular those in Africa, the Caribbean region and the Pacific, as expressed in the Lomé agreements,

1. Calls on the Commission to ensure that Lomè IV comes into force rapidly and on the Member States to ratify the agreement without delay;

2. Renews its request to the Council for the full amount of debt owed to the Community by the ACP States to be written off forthwith;

3. Draws attention to the Community's commitments with regard to the indebtedness of the ACP countries, pointing out that rescheduling, cancelling or partially cancelling the debt will not attack the root causes of the developing countries' economic crisis, particularly the collapse in the price of raw materials and export products and the absence of any real worldwide market organizations for agricultural products;

4. Calls on the Member States to ratify the agreement without delay and calls on the Council to continue to take an interest in the serious problems facing the developing countries;

5. Stresses that signing the Lomé Convention creates certain rights and obligations for each partner and that it is particularly incumbent on the EEC, in this period of world political instability, to give vigorous support to the Convention's ACP signatory states through specific measures;

6. Stresses the need for the Commission to implement urgently specific measures to assist the Republic of Haiti, having regard to the extreme fragility of the democracy recently established in that country and the increasingly serious social problems it has to face, and to assist the Dominican Republic and Namibia;

7. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and Commission, the governments of the Member States, the Presidency of the ACP/EEC Joint Assembly and the signatory states of the Lomé Convention.