EU approves €122m aid to Eritrea despite human rights concerns
On Wednesday 1 April, the EU Member States approved a €122 million aid package for Eritrea from the European Development Fund, despite strong concerns from civil society and parliamentarians over the country's poor human rights record. The EU is one of the few donors continuing to give support to the increasingly isolated regime in Asmara and is Eritrea's largest aid donor by far.The Eritrean government continues to be extremely repressive. NGOs are not allowed access to the country, all private press was shut down in 2001, and thousands of prisoners of conscience are held in secret jails.
A spokesperson for EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel said that although the human rights situation in the country was of "great concern" to the Commission, "engagement is the best response and we keep our policy under review".
This was dismissed in an article by Eurostep Director Simon Stocker and Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean human rights activist living in Sweden, published in New Europe:
"The justification given that "engagement is the best response" has little credibility in the face of any perceived result of such engagement over the past few years. Things are getting worse, not better. In this context, progress, it would seem, is based on the EU being able to talk to the regime. Dialogue may be important but unless it has tangible results it surely does not merit the positive signal of 122 million Euro."
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