1.
EU DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL
EU
Development Ministers met for the EU Development Council on 31
May 2001 under the Chairpersonship of Swedish Development
Minister Ms Maj Inger Klingval. One of the main issues on the
agenda was the improvement of the effectiveness of EU aid to
developing countries. The ministers adopted conclusions
inviting the European Commission to continue the reforms of its
services that are already underway. The conclusions also
recognised the role that EU Member States have to play in
increasing aid efficiency, mainly through improving the
coordination of their interventions on the ground. The
ministers called on the Commission to submit an annual progress
report of EU development and an action plan on development
co-operation each autumn.
The
Council also adopted conclusions on emergency aid and
rehabilitation, that recommend flexibility in a
country-by-country approach towards country strategy documents in
this area. Flexibility is also recommend in interventions by the
European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) to allow for delays
or extensions in the transition between emergency aid and
development cooperation.
On
sustainable development, the Council adopted conclusions on its
strategy for integrating environmental policies in EU Development
Cooperation. A resolution was also adopted on sustainable
transport in development cooperation, stressing that EU aid to
this sector in Least Developed Countries must be consistent with
national programmes for eradicating poverty.
Following
discussions with WHO Executive Secretary – Gro Harlem, on
the UN initiative in favour of a world fund for health and for
combating AIDS, the Council adopted a declaration on the
communicable diseases – AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
Two
regulations were also adopted on ant-personnel mines. Other
issues that were on the Development Council’s agenda were:
a) the adoption of resolution on the partnership between the
European Community, and the UN; b) coherence between Community
non-development policies and development policy (put on the
agenda by the Dutch delegation); c) conflict prevention and
development; d) adoption of conclusions of support to the
electoral process and the observation of elections in developing
countries (put on the agenda by the French delegation); e) an
informal discussion on the ratification of the Cotonou Agreement
(at the request of the Commission); f) an informal discussion on
information technology in developing countries; g) an informal
discussion on the results of the 3rd UN Least
Developed Countries Conference.
According
to an EU civil servant the Ministers dealt with all issues on its
proposed agenda accordingly. The PAF will try to bring you more
information on the Council meeting in the coming weeks.
2.
WIDE SPREAD DISATISFACTION WITH THE RESULTS OF UN LDC III
CONFERENCE – EU DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONER ATTEMPTS TO PAINT
ROSY PICTURE OF CONFERENCE AT THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
Despite the
professed importance that many governments claimed to have given
to the Third UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries
hosted in Brussels by the EU, most observers and civil society
organisations have described the results of the conference as
disappointing. The action plan, adopted at the end of the work,
expresses the desire of the international community to reduce, by
half, the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 and
to promote sustainable development in the 49 poorest countries of
the world, but it does not contain any immediate concrete
measures.
The action plan
is summarised by a list of seven engagements of which the most
innovative is the recommendation to untie aid granted to LDC.
Another important commitment agreed by the participants is the
opening of the markets of the rich countries to LDC products
(on the basis of the EU’s “Everything but the
Arms” initiative).
Civil Society
organisations that gathered in the NGO Forum parallel to the
conference, expressed their disappointment with the results
reached by the conference, citing a number of shortcomings:
§
There was no complete and unconditional cancellation of LDC debt;
§
The signatories did not renew their commitment to increase ODA to
0.7% of GDP by 2005;
§
There was no allocation of additional resources to help the LDC
to limit the impact of climate change;
§
The plan of action does not contain any commitment to ensure that
any reforms to the World Trade Organisation system would not
further undermine the interests of LDCs;
§
There is no commitment to empower women in LDCs;
For the complete
position of Civil Society on III UN LDC Conference please visit
the following web page: http://www.oneworld.org/liaison/forum/en/press/release2.htm
However, the EU
Commissioner for Development, Mr Poul Nielson in a speech at the
European Parliament (EP) described the LDC Conference as
satisfactory to the hosts – the EU. During last week’s
EP Development Committee, Mr Nielson argued that there were clear
indications, at the Conference, from many developing countries to
integrate into the world economy through accession to the WTO. He
compared the LDC conference to the 3rd
WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle, describing the former as
more constructive and pragmatic than the latter. Mr Nielson
also cited the involvement of NGOs in the official debates as
innovative, but he described NGO interventions as boring and
predictable. Mr Nielson also argued that one of the direct
effects of the Conference was the adoption of the EU market
access initiative for Least Developed Countries, known as the
Everything But Arms (EBA). According to Mr Nielson, without the
LDC Conference, the EU would not have adopted the EBA (see below
for Eurostep report on the EBA). He said that this gave
the EU something to bring to the Conference, whilst the US and
Japan were unable to offer anything at the Conference.
The majority of MEPs
responding to Mr Nielson’s speech expressed their
dissatisfaction at the results of the Conference, describing the
Conference as full of words but little action. MEPs also
expressed their disappointment in what they described as the
marginal role that the European Parliament was given at the
Conference. According UK Conservative, Mr Deva, the marginal
role that parliamentarians have played in big international
conferences such as those of the UN and the WTO has resulted in a
democratic deficit in these processes, leading to unrest such as
there was at 3rd WTO Ministerial
Conference in Seattle.
Danish MEP Ulla
Sandbaek informed the Committee that a group of MEPs had taken
the initiative to create an alliance with parliamentarians from
LDCs at the Conference. She looked forward to building stronger
relations with the LDC parliamentarians.
3. NGO FORUM
AT THE UN LDC III – EUROSTEP MEETINGS
The NGO Forum that
took place in Brussels during the 3rd United Nations
Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC) was meant to
represent the voice of civil society at the UN Conference and to
stimulate and coordinate the activities of the NGOs for the
Conference.
The Forum produced a
declaration, presented to the UN representatives, which expresses
the Civil Society demands for a more egalitarian and humanitarian
world. A press release of this declaration can be found at http://www.oneworld.org/liaison/forum/en/press/conclu.html
Among
the meetings that the Eurostep secretariat and member
organisations organised under the NGO Forum were meetings on:
Market Access (Action Aid); Civil Society: European –
Asian partnership (Hivos); Globalizing Poverty: the
Reality of Aid (Eurostep, UNDP and Social Watch); The
targets for education for all (Global Campaign for Education);
and the Workshop on Meeting the challenges and
opportunities of civil society participation in ACP-EU
Cooperation (Eurostep, 11.11.11 and CIDSE/Trocaire)
The
main aims of the workshop on civil society participation in
ACP-EU Cooperation were to:
§
Explore ways as in which civil society could develop common
approaches in advocacy and monitoring of the Cotonou Agreement;
§
Explore ways in which ACP and EU civil society organisations
could organise themselves in an autonomous manner.
The workshop put forward proposals for civil society advocacy
and monitoring of the implementation of the Cotonou Agreement in
three areas: a) trade, b) civil society participation and c)
health & education. Suggestions were put forward for the
establishment of a number of working groups made of civil society
organisations to follow implementation in these areas. The ACP-EU
Joint Parliamentary Assembly was also identified as an important
tool for civil society advocacy and monitoring.
The workshop also put forward proposals on how the ACP-EU
Conference on the participation of civil society in implementing
the Cotonou Agreement, (July 6-7, 2001 - Brussels) organised by
the forthcoming Belgian Presidency of the EU and the ACP
Secretariat in collaboration with the European Commission should
be organised. These proposals will be fed into the taskforce that
has been set up to organise the Conference in July.
A report on the workshop on civil society participation should be
available soon.
4. POUL
NIELSON EXPRESSES ANGER OVER STALLED PROJECTS IN POOR COUNTRIES
DUE POOR ADMINISTRATION, BUREAUCRACY AND STAFF SHORTAGES
EU Development commissioner, Poul Nielson, expressed his anger
this week over how bureaucratic inertia had stalled a € 1.7
billion programme for reducing AIDS in some of the poorest
countries. Only 16% of the EU funding allocated towards
fighting sexually transmitted disease between 1995 was spent in
the stipulated timeframe. Nielson singled out one agreement
worth € 10.5 million, which the Commission has signed with
the UNFPA in 1997, aimed at distributing condoms in Bangladesh.
However, because of a disagreement over procurement rules the
initiative has never materialised.
Earlier this year the EU Court of Auditors criticised the
Commission’s development efforts for being too centralised
in Brussels, and having an inadequate field presence. As a
result the Commission has decided to strengthen its delegations
in 22 poor regions across the world, by assigning an additional
two members of staff to each delegation.
The Commission has been unable to spend about € 20 billion
in aid that it has allocated because of a shortage of personnel
to oversee its use.
5.
QUESTIONNAIRE ON CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION IN ACP FOR ACP-EU
CIVIL SOCIETY CONFERENCE IN JULY
As part of the
preparations of the ACP-EU conference on the participation of
civil society in implementing the Cotonou Agreement, (July 6-7,
2001 - Brussels) organised by the forthcoming Belgian Presidency
of the EU and the ACP Secretariat, ECDPM have produced a
questionnaire aimed at ACP civil society organisations, to help
provide the meeting with experiences of civil society
participation in the ACP. The responses to the questionnaire will
be discussed at the meeting.
The aim of the
organisers of the meeting is to involve as many ACP civil society
organisations as possible in the meeting through the
questionnaire. The deadline for returning responses to the
questionnaire is 10 June. You may contact [email protected] for a copy of the
questionnaire. Reponses to the questionnaire should be sent to [email protected]
6. IN BRIEF
The European
Commission, this week, approved its strategy paper on sustainable
development. President Prodi, who presented the paper to the
European Parliament plenary, stressed that this strategy will be
the focus of both the work of the European Council (15 and 16 of
June) and the EU/United States Summit in Gothenburg. This
document, entitled “a sustainable Europe for a better
world: a Union strategy for sustainable development”,
defines a strategy based on inter-sectoral proposals, priority
aims and measures to be adopted at the Community level to reduce
the main trends contrary to sustainable development.
The European
Commission and the Government of the Republic of
Congo-Brazzaville have signed, on 17 May a
co-operation programme of € 51.3 million. This amount will
finance the implementation of the National Indicative Programme
(NIP) for the Congo, who’s signing had been delayed by
conflicts. The targets are: support to projects in the social
domain, support for the drafting of a national transport plan,
the financing of a study for the reconstruction of the
Brazzaville-Kinkala road as well as the support for the drafting
of an electoral law compatible to international standards.
By
adopting a resolution on human rights in Cameroon during the last
plenary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament (EP)
called on the EU to open consultations with this country under
article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement (first step before possible
suspension of European aid). This decision was taken after many
human rights organizations revealed the systematic use of the
torture and the many cases of disappearances and extra-judicial
executions. The EP called for the creation of an
independent commission of enquiry and a Commission and Council
technical assistance to the magistrates. The Commission answered
that recourse to Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement is not
justified yet.
A report
of Eurostep’s meeting on Implementation Issues
Regarding the EBA Initiative is available at the following web
address: http://www.oneworld.org/eurostep/ebarep.htm