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Eurostep welcomes the Commission’s efforts to produce a discussion paper on European Community Development Policy. The review of European Community development assistance comes at a time when the benefits of economic and social development are being significantly eroded in many of the poorest countries, through declining life expectancy, increasing infant mortality and declining access to the provision of primary health and basic education. At the same time developed countries are cutting back official development assistance to developing countries.
A review of EC development assistance provides the opportunity for the EC to redesign its approach to development so as to meet the abovementioned challenges. The timing of the EC review of development also allows the Community to contribute towards the reviews of the UN Conference on Social Development and Women taking place this year.
Effectively addressing these challenges and events however necessitates the EC paper to produce concrete proposals and strategies on the way forward for EC development assistance.
Given the potential significance of the Commission’s paper on EU Development policy in the coming years, Eurostep believe that the timeframe allotted to NGOs to comment on the paper was seriously inadequate.[1] It did not allow NGOs to engage in a serious discussion and reflection that such a paper should merit.
Even though the Commission representatives informed European NGOs, in the lead up to the release of the discussion paper, that consultations with southern NGOs were desired, the manner in which consultations were conducted does not suggest that a serious attempt was made to consult with southern NGOs.
While Eurostep recognises the tight constraints that the Commission has to work under, the Commission has in the last few months expressed its wish to improve dialogue between the Commission and NGOs. The Commission discussion paper The Commission And Non-Governmental Organisations: Building A Stronger Partnership released earlier this year stresses as one of the guidelines of consultations with NGOs, the importance of the provision of “adequate background information in good time so that NGOs can consult their own members properly (thereby helping to ensure the quality and representativeness of the NGO input), and in a language and style accessible to the NGO audience”.
Moreover the European Council, on whose request the Commission prepared the paper, state in the Council conclusions of 21 June 1999 that “The Council invites the Commission to elaborate, after the widest consultation possible, a proposal for the overall policy statement by the first half of the year 2000.
The attitude displayed by the Commission towards consultation with civil society concerning this paper, gives NGOs little confidence of the sincerity of the Commission to conduct such consultations with NGOs in the development of its policies. This attitude runs contrary to the rhetoric that is professed in Commission documents and other EU documents such as the new ACP-EU Agreement on improving consultation with civil society.
According to the EU Council conclusions (21 June 2000) the Commission’s paper was intended as a follow up to the findings and recommendations of the Evaluation of the European Community’s development instruments and programmes requested by the Council in 1995.
It could thus be envisaged that at least one of the aims of the Commission’s paper should have been to address these findings raised by the evaluation report. However, though the Commission’s paper (Section 2.3) provides a summary of the problems identified by the evaluation report, very little indication is given as to how these problems will be tackled. Rather a number of general strategies/objectives are identified regarding policy and implementation that do not specifically relate to the problems raised by the evaluation. The paper failed to fulfil its primary purpose.
The paper provides a comprehensive commentary on the importance of development co-operation, the role the European Community could play in development co-operation, the problems affecting EC aid and the direction the EC should follow in the future. However it does not propose any precise strategies or actions to address the fundamental questions that have been raised concerning EC aid. Furthermore no specific objectives, goals and target are put forward by which the performance of EC aid could be measured.
As a result the paper does not contribute towards enabling the Community to achieve its development co-operation goals and solve the problems that have plagued EC aid.
Though the Commission paper provides a good summary of the problems identified by the evaluation no analyses is provided as to how these problems relate to or impede the realisation of the Community’s development objectives, as set out in the Amsterdam Treaty and the international development targets agreed by the EU. It would perhaps have been more useful for the Commission paper to delve deeper into how problems such as the lack of ranking of development objectives, the complexity of the system of Commission aid and the lack of human resources have affected the campaign against poverty and the Commission’s contribution towards the international development targets. This would have provided a better insight into how best to improve the effectiveness of EC aid.
The objectives presented in this section (3.1) lack precision. They do not specifically address the problems identified in the earlier section nor do they indicate exactly how they address the growing poverty that is highlighted in the paper.
As regards to some of the problems identified, consideration should have been given to the following objectives:
The objectives are too numerous, too vague and not ranked:
The Community should focus on the overall objective of poverty eradication as agreed by EU Member States at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995. The realisation of the international development targets should be considered as sub-objectives to this overall objective. Integration into the world economy should be only considered as a strategy where it has been proven to contribute towards eradication of poverty. Most importantly the fulfilment of the overall objective should be reflected in the sectoral and regional allocation of resources.
The Commission’s aid system is too complex and fragmented:
An aim of the reorganisation of the Commission should be to ensure that one Commission Directorate-General is in charge of managing development policy and implementation for all geographic regions. This Directorate should also be in charge of all emergency and humanitarian aid.
Human resources are too thin on the ground and in Brussels:
The quantity and quality of staff levels in DG Development and Commission delegations need to be increased especially with expertise in social development and gender issues. A detailed proposal for this should be put forward by the Commission.
There are too many different financial instruments:
Budget lines should be regrouped under common denominators of ‘social development’, ‘environment’, ‘humanitarian aid’ etc.
Financial controls have to be simplified:
Increased attention should be given to achieving improvements in the budgetary systems of developing countries through co-ordinated efforts of the Community and Member States together with the recipient state.
In addition to responses to the problems identified, the following strategies should have also been outlined.
The rationale behind the separation of the issues raised in this section (3.2) from the section on policy objectives and strategies is unclear. The manner of implementation of the issues raised here such as ownership and working with civil society depends on the policies and strategies that should have been defined in the previous section.
With regards to ownership, a manner of making sure that developing countries own the programmes that are implemented in their countries is by ensuring that the governments of these countries, in consultation with civil society, draft their own national indicative programmes. Experience of the implementation of previous Lomé Conventions demonstrates that in many cases this does not happen. Support and capacity building of the offices in developing countries responsible for drafting these programmes should be envisaged by the Commission as a means of ensuring ownership of programmes.
The Commission’s discussion paper lacks the specific proposals and strategies that Eurostep believes are needed to improve the EC’s ability to achieve its own development objectives and the agreed UN objectives of poverty eradication.
However the Commission’s discussion paper could be considered as the basis to provoke specific proposals from other actors involved in the discussion on the review of EC aid, (i.e. civil society, EU Member States and the European Parliament).
Member states
officials involved in the review process should thus discuss and
consider the specific comments put forward by civil society
organisations, and the European Parliament alongside the
Commission paper’s comments in the preparation of their
final conclusions for the review of EC aid.
April 2000
[1] The paper was placed on the European Commission’s on DG Development’s website 7 days before the deadline for comments.
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