| EU aid policy should focus more on country ownership, NGOs warn |
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Ahead of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, to be held in Busan, South Korea from 29 November to 1 December, a new survey concludes that despite improvements the EU could save €4 billion in development aid by better coordinating its aid provisions to developing countries. The impact of the EU’s aid provisions on receiving countries however does not primarily depend on the coordination among EU donors but on the capacity of receiving countries to manage those funds effectively, development agencies have warned. According to the survey evaluating the 2005 Paris Declaration, the EU’s aid policy is more transparent, predictable and coordinated than five years ago but could save an additional €4 billion by improving aid coordination among its member states. “I am aware that efforts are still too slow and more efforts are needed”, said EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, presenting the Commission’s (EC) proposal for a more effective international aid agenda. In light of the communication that is to serve as input for an EU common position to be agreed in November, Piebalgs announced to “secure a solid EU position, with clear and reachable commitments”. In Busan, the EC is thus to focus on “ownership, transparency, predictability, reduction of fragmentation of aid, alignment, as well as accountability of results”, the communication reads. “The [EC] also calls for a strengthening of global development partnerships, especially with emerging economies, private sector and civil society, in order to achieve Millennium Development Goals by 2015”, it continues. Development NGOs have however criticised the EC for not sufficiently addressing the ability of receiving countries to manage funds effectively. If the EU is to increase the impact of its aid policies, it should strengthen the accountability of receiving countries by providing funds directly to the governments and end its conditionality policy, reads a position paper of the European Development NGO confederation CONCORD. “The Commission recommends blending loans and grants and using innovative ways of raising money to leverage additional development funds, but it does not say how financial institutions are going to be chosen and how they can effectively track the social impact of the aid they channel,” stressed aid effectiveness expert Franz Josef Berger from CONCORD. However, “the assumption that country ownership in this sense already exists, and the only issue for international actors is how to avoid undermining it, is completely unrealistic, at least in low-income Africa”, warns David Booth from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). The effectiveness of aid thus finally depends on whether or not a country’s leadership is really committed to development. “That the most promising kind of external contribution to development which outsiders can make is skill- and knowledge-intensive engagement with the collective-action problems at the heart of countries’ political systems is a hard message to get across. We need to find ways of doing this”, Booth concludes. Read CONCORD’s position paper here: CONCORD (pdf). Read the ODI paper here: ODI: Overseas Development Institute (pdf). Sources:  |
