The European Commission's Development
Cooperation
Speaking Points
Gérard Depayre
European Institute, Washington, DC
October 2, 2003
EU as the
larger contributor of foreign aid
The EU (Commission and Member States) already provide 55% of worldwide Official
Development Assistance (ODA) ($26.3 billion out of $52.3 billion total). At present,
the EU provides 0.33% of its national income as Official Development Assistance
(compared with a US contribution of 0.11%). The EU has committed at Monterrey
to increase it further to reach 0.39% not later than 2006, with a view to meeting
eventually the UN/OECD target of 0.7%. The US President’s Millennium Challenge
Account would, when fully implemented, bring the US Official Development Assistance
to a level of more or less 0.22% of national income (presently the US provides
$10 million annually, 19% of total foreign aid).
European Commission’s Goals
The EC is strongly committed to working with the rest of the international
community to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as established
by the UN Millennium Summit. The main priority of the Community’s assistance is
the MDG of poverty reduction (to reduce by half the number of people who live
on less than $1 per day by 2015). The other MDGs such as improved access to health,
education, water and sanitation (all interlinked to poverty reduction) are also
priorities for the European Commission. Areas of concentration are trade and development,
regional integration, macro-economic support, transport, food security and institutional
capacity building and good governance.
Modalities
European Commission in its
practice on development cooperation tries to ensure that development
considerations and not political strategies remain the dominant criteria for
decisions about its development policies and programs. The EC has embraced
the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach, launched by the
World Bank (WB). This approach focuses on ownership and participatory
approach: foreign aid is programmed on the country’s own poverty
reduction strategy which should be the result of a participatory
process e.g. involvement of civil society, NGOs, perhaps the Parliament. The PRSP
approach also stresses a real partnership between donors and the recipient
countries to ensure that donors take into account the political environment
and local structures and values. On conditionality the Commission argues
that aid needs to be rigorously monitored and evaluated for output and
impact (how many children graduated from primary school) and not in terms of
input and money spent (how many schools were built). In this respect the EC
is moving away from project support (a possibility to raise its flag) in
favour of budget support as a more sustainable way to deal with the broader
policy and institutional issues that have led to the problems in the first
place (lack of hospitals or schools etc). Selectivity is practiced in
choosing recipient countries. All EC co-operation or partnership agreements
between the EU and developing countries include a specific provision that can
lead to the suspension or limitation of co-operation. At the same time the
EC is well aware that there is a danger of ignoring “failed states” as the
events of September 11 have taught us. It takes the approach that “failed states”
should not be forgotten. It maintains a political dialogue with “failed
states” and provides financial support for institutional capacity building
through non-state actors.
The Commission
has taken the lead in pressing for further European Union action on untying aid.
A Commission communication (Nov. 02) proposes an almost complete untying of
Community aid (subject to the agreement of the recipient country and on a
reciprocal basis between donors). Moreover, the Communication calls for the
rules of the internal market to apply also to the Official Development Assistance of the Member States and advises
them to untie their bilateral programs. The Communication also advocated a
complete untying of food aid and food aid transport.
The European Union
as a whole is one of the world's main humanitarian aid donors; the Humanitarian
Aid Office (ECHO) is the service of the European Commission responsible
for this activity. It provides quick humanitarian assistance (€540 million in
2002) through its partners in the field (UN, NGOs etc). The police framework of
ECHO makes clear that the sole objective is the relief of human suffering. Decisions
must be taken impartially, subject only to the needs and interests of victims.
The Commission has already raised concerns on the involvement of the US military
on delivering humanitarian assistance to Iraq.
With respect to the food aid we believe that aid should be provided
as grants and, wherever possible, purchased locally or within the broader region.
Otherwise, one risks disrupting local markets and making the problem worse in
the long term. We argue that food aid “in kind”, that is direct food parcels from
donors, should only be used on an exceptional basis, in response to the needs
of well-defined vulnerable groups or in response to an emergency in the framework
of the UN system.
Conflict prevention/Conflict resolution
Several of the
poorest countries in the world are in conflict. In its communication on
conflict prevention the EC maintains that, as conflict and poverty (lack of
resources) are interrelated, preventive mechanisms to hinder the explosion
of conflicts or preventing them from further spreading must be developed as
well as the financial means which support these mechanisms.
At Community level,
the Commission is in the process of reforming its instruments to ensure a swift
Community reaction to crisis or pre-crisis situations. An important step was taken
with the adoption last year of a
Rapid Reaction Mechanism (RRM), allowing for quick initiatives in peace
building, reconstruction and development. The RRM is now fully operational and
has been used during 2001 in the
Balkans,
Afghanistan and the
Democratic Republic of Congo to bring quickly a host of measures to bear on
a conflict situation. The Commission has stated recently its political decision
that for the first time ever $250 million from the 9th European Development
Fund be put into a “peace support fund” for peacekeeping capacity building of
the African Union and other regional peacekeeping organizations. Moreover, Liberia
peacekeeping operations ($8 million) are about to be financed from the European
Development Fund, the first time ever that this occurs.
At the EU
level, examples of successful cases of EU’s peacekeeping operations are the
replacement of the NATO forces by EU peacekeeping forces in FYROM and the
deployment of French troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Bunia).
