Eurostep weekly

Europe reneges on aid pledge
Europe’s richest countries have been accused of back-pedalling on their promises to increase development aid.
Last week’s G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany wrapped up with a communiqué pledging $60 billion for Africa to help it fight against pandemics such as AIDS, TB and Malaria. Yet the eight governments - four (Germany, Britain, Italy and France) of which belong to the EU - did not set any timeframe for delivering that aid. Nor did they state if the money would be additional to that already promised.
Anti-poverty activists believe the summit reneged on commitments made by the G8 two years earlier in Gleneagles, Scotland.
Oxfam predicted that at the current rate of progress aid to help Africa deal with major diseases will only increase by $3 billion in 2010. This will be $27 billion less than what the G8 had promised in 2005.
“Creative accounting will not save lives,” Oxfam’s Max Lawson said. “Only delivering on promises will.”
At Gleaneagles, the G8 promised that 10 million people suffering from AIDS would have access to treatment with antiretroviral medicines by 2010. Yet, under the terms of the new G8 communiqué, only 5 million may actually receive that treatment.
On climate change, the G8 agreed that there should be a global agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions negotiated through the United Nations. This was welcomed by José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, who said the entire G8 is no longer discussing “if we should act but by when and how.”
But both environmental and anti-poverty activists complained that the communiqué fell short of what is needed to protect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable from the adverse effects of global warming.

Sources:
www.europa.eu
www.oxfam.org
www.foe.org
www.euobserver.com

Parliament challenge to funding of Philippine project rejected
Parliament challenge to funding of Philippine project rejected A European Parliament legal challenge to a Commission 2004 decision to use development funds to finance a border security project in the Philippines has been rejected by the European Court. The European Parliament accused the Commission of exceeding its powers as the principal aim of the Philippine Border Control project, which was to combat terrorism, was incompatible with the purposes of the legislation covering the use of the funds.
The Court’s opinion rejected Parliament’s challenge on procedural grounds judging that it had been too late in responding to the initial information sent by the Commission. However, the opinion of the Court’s Avocat Général concluded that the substance of the Parliament’s challenge was correct. The funding of the project did not fit within the definition of development aid. Interpreting the notion of development as the Commission had done in this instance did not lie within their jurisdiction, but was the responsibility of the legislator.
It is expected that the rejection of the Parliament’s challenge will be confirmed when the Court makes its ruling.

Sources:
www.curia.europa.eu

EU told not to foist drug patents on poor
The European Union should not be demanding that poor countries apply its rules on intellectual property to medicines as part of its trade negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc, legal experts have argued.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, is hoping to conclude free trade deals known as Economic Partnership Agreements with 76 ACP countries by the end of this year. Under proposals put forward by the Commission, these would require ACP countries to place EU intellectual property rules on their national statute books.
Frederick Abbott, a professor of international law at Florida State University in the US, believes that if the Commission is successful, it would impose a “substantial burden” on the countries concerned and that there could be adverse consequences for public health. Instead, he recommended that the EU should be encouraging poor countries to make use of flexibilities in rules set by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). By doing so, it could drive down the cost of drugs that would prove prohibitive should the patents on them be enforced.
Abbott has been hired by the European Parliament’s committee on international trade to prepare an analysis of what policy options the EU has to boost the supply of medicines in poor countries.
Presenting his initial findings on 4 June, Abbott considered whether the Parliament, the EU’s only directly-elected body, should endorse a protocol amending the WTO’s trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement.
That protocol, which was approved by the WTO in December 2005, is designed to give permanent effect to a waiver from TRIPS agreed by the organisation two years earlier. The waiver allowed countries lacking the capacity to manufacture their own drugs the possibility to import generic versions of patented medicines produced under a compulsory license. It followed the 2001 declaration by a WTO ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, that intellectual property rights should be interpreted in a way that protects public health and promotes “access to medicines for all”. Yet while the WTO has asked its 150 member governments to ratify the protocol by the end of 2007, Abbott argued that the Parliament may be right to stall on approving it. Delay could be used as a tactic to pressurise the Commission and the EU’s governments to refrain from insisting that ACP countries agree to apply the Union’s standards on intellectual property.

Sources:
www.ip-watch.ch
www.msf.org

Concern over ratification of European Development Fund
The European Commission has expressed concern that it will not be able to commit aid to countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) regions at the beginning of 2008 because European and ACP Parliaments may not have ratified legislation for this before the end of 2007.
The Commission can only start using the € 22.8 billion pledged by EU member states for 2008 to 2013 when all the 27 member state Parliaments have ratified the agreement establishing the 10th European Development Fund which EU governments signed in July 2006.
In addition changes to the Cotonou Agreement agreed between the EU and ACP countries in June 2005 also need to be ratified by all member state Parliaments and 53 ACP national Parliaments, representing 2/3rds of the total membership of the group.
By late May only 6 Member states had ratified the funding agreement, and 7 the changes to the Cotonou Agreement. On the ACP side just 8 countries had completed the process for the Cotonou Agreement changes.
The Commission has stated that “this situation is clearly worrying. It puts at risk the possibility to intervene financially in some of the poorest countries in the world. It also undermines the credibility of the EU as a leader in development.” The Commission is urging Member States and ACP countries to complete the process before November 2007.

Sources:
www.ec.europa.eu

Trade talks may be shelved, says Mandelson
World trade talks could be postponed for several years unless top industrialised and developing countries achieve a breakthrough this summer, Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade, has predicted.
Mandelson said that intensive discussions between the EU, US, India and Brazil are expected in the coming weeks to see if the Doha round of trade talks can be salvaged. If this effort fails, he warned that focus in the US will turn to the 2008 presidential election from this autumn onwards and that there will be no resumption of talks until 2010. “And I wouldn’t put an enormous amount of money on everybody being able to restart them even then,” he told the European Parliament’s committee on international trade (4 June).
Although Mandelson claimed that the EU had made generous offers on reducing its support for farm subsidies, he said that India and Brazil should now be willing to open up their markets to industrial goods, “even if not to the same extent” as richer countries.
He described these “emerging economy partners” as “critical” in the talks. “If we cannot reach a deal on trade, what chance will we have to reach a collective agreement on even more difficult issues like climate change in the future?”
Mandelson refuted allegations raised by MEPs that the EU had forgotten how the ‘Doha development agenda’ agreed by World Trade Organisation governments in 2001 was designed to use trade as a tool for alleviating poverty. He argued that the Union had made a number of development-friendly offers, especially in the agricultural field.

Sources:
www.europarl.europa.eu
www.bilaterals.org

Eritrea slammed for snub to MEPs
The Eritrean government will be criticised next week for refusing to allow parliamentarians from Europe and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc visit the country. A report drawn up by French Liberal Thierry Cornillet examining the work of the joint parliamentary assembly between the EU and ACP last year is to be considered by MEPs meeting in Strasbourg (18-21 June).
It notes that a number of ‘fact-finding missions’ were undertaken by members of the assembly in 2006. These included visits to Swaziland and Mauritius to assess the effects of reform of the EU’s sugar policy, Kenya to assess a drought, Malta and Spain to study the plight of migrants from ACP countries and to Togo, Ethiopia and Congo to address their political situations. Yet a planned visit to Eritrea could not take place because the authorities there would not allow it, the report says.
Cornillet also recommends that the assembly’s political affairs committee should be strengthened so that it becomes a “genuine forum” for resolving and preventing conflict and that there should be greater attention paid by the assembly’s bodies to the growing role of China in Africa’s economic and political affairs.

Sources:
www.europarl.europa.eu

Commission denies having African trade critic sacked
The head of the European Commission’s office in Namibia has denied that her officials sought to silence one of the country’s most outspoken opponents of a planned free trade deal between Africa and the EU.
Wallie Roux, a trade analyst with the Namibian meat exporting firm Meatco, was suspended from his job last month after arguing that the EU was trying to browbeat his government into signing an Economic Partnership Agreement by the end of this year.
His dismissal prompted much speculation in Namibia that the Commission’s office there had lobbied for action to be taken against him.
But Elisabeth Pape, the Commission’s top official in Windhoek, denied that her office had complained about Roux’s comments.
Pape told the Inter Press Service news agency that she believed Roux should have freedom of expression but that his dismissal was entirely a matter between him and his employer.
Roux had spoken at a public event, at which he argued that he urged African governments not to conclude sub-optimal free trade deals as hastily as the Commission wants. “If you are unwise enough to rush for a deadline without looking at the content of the agreement, then you are signing away your life,” he said.

Sources:
www.ipsnews.com
www.larri.com.na

Pressure increases to reach deal
As the meeting of the European Council of 21/22 June looms member State leaders are bring put under increased pressure to finalise a deal that will lead to a revision of the EU’s treaties sooner rather than later. The Portuguese EU Ambassador, Alvaro de Mendoca, has re-iterated that unless there is a commitment to reach a deal the Portuguese Presidency will not initiate a formal negotiation on changes to the treaties during the second part of this year.
Meanwhile France’s recently elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is touring Europe to get support for his concept of a mini-treaty. At the G8 summit in Germany he remarked about a deal with UK Prime Minister.
The three main issues of contention remain the question of giving the EU a legal personality, the legal status of the Fundamental Charter of Fundamental Rights, the issue of extending qualified majority voting, and whether to change the voting system. Polish Prime Minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, continues to stick to his hard line position on the latter.

Sources:
www.euonserver.com

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