Eurostep weekly

Aid rises inadequate to reach health goals, say MEPs
Increases in development aid from the EU will not be sufficient to reach the UN’s targets on improving health in poor countries, a new European Parliament report has warned. The UN’s millennium development goals commit the international community to halting the spread of AIDS and dramatically reducing other illnesses, particularly among women and children, by 2015.
Yet the Parliament’s development committee this week (4-5 June) discussed a report complaining that the EU provides less than 7% of all development aid earmarked for health-related spending. Rich countries must allocate €21 billion per year to health aid if the UN’s targets are to be reached, said Welsh Socialist MEP Glenys Kinnock, the report’s author. But projected increases in EU aid suggest it will only be providing 41% of that sum by 2010, leaving a shortfall of nearly €12 billion.
Kinnock has called for increased aid to be raised through innovative sources of finance, such as a levy on air travel. A French levy on air travel, she noted, is expected to raise €187 million per year.
She also urged that EU governments and the European Commission better coordinate their aid efforts to ensure they are more effective.
A separate report published last week called for greater monitoring of whether aid is helping to achieve greater equality between men and women. Targets for the impact of aid on each sex should be set when programmes for spending aid are being drawn up, the report recommended.
The report followed a 20 May conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on gender issues in the former Soviet Union.

Sources:
www.europarl.europa.eu

EU, US still at odds on climate
Trans-Atlantic differences over climate change are likely to remain acute this week, as Germany hosts a summit of G8 leaders in Heiligendamm (6-8 June).
Top EU policy-makers have reacted angrily to a pre-summit proposal by George W Bush that the world’s 15 largest emitters of greenhouse gases should establish a new international agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared dismayed at the suggestion that this accord would be reached outside the UN’s institutional framework. Germany’s insistence that talks take place inside the UN is “non-negotiable”, she said.
The Berlin government has been trying to convince the G8 that it should echo commitments on climate change made by the EU in March. These would include a pledge not to increase global temperatures by more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Yet the Bush Administration has signalled it would not sign up to such a goal.
The final declaration from the summit is expected to recall the G8’s pledge in 2005 to double aid to Africa to $25 billion by 2010.
Following criticisms that Germany and other countries have strayed off track in increasing aid, Merkel has announced a rise of €750 million in development aid over the next four years.

Sources:
www.ft.com
www.data.org

Rights may be diluted in new treaty
A bill of rights could be removed from the EU’s constitution in order to make it palatable for all of the Union’s 27 governments, it has emerged.
Britain and the Netherlands are leading calls for the Charter on Fundamental Rights not to be contained in the treaty that would replace the EU constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
The charter recognises the rights to freedom of speech, universal health care and of workers to have fair conditions, including the possibility to strike.
It is also probable that Britain will demand the removal of a clause giving the EU legal personality. This provision could allow the EU to sign international agreements as a bloc and may pave the way for France and Britain to give up their seats as permanent members of the UN Security Council in favour of a single EU representative on that powerful body, the newspaper European Voice has reported.
A new treaty is to be drawn up by a so-called intergovernmental conference, following a summit of EU leaders in June.
The European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee is demanding that the conference reject any proposal which would diminish the rights of EU citizens and that it address such issues as climate change, terrorism and migration.

Sources:
www.europeanvoice.com
www.euobserver.com
www.europarl.europa.eu

Study impact of trade deals before you sign - African campaigners
Trade negotiations between the EU and Africa must be analysed before any of the planned Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are signed, anti-poverty campaigners from Cameroon have urged.
At a meeting in Cotonou, Benin, in 2000, the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping jointly decided that trade deals between the two sides should be subject to impact studies. But no such review has been undertaken of the EPAs, which the European Commission is pushing ACP countries to sign by the end of this year, according to the Coalition of African Organisations for Food Security and Sustainable Development (COSADER) in Yaoundé, Cameroon. COSADER last week (31 May) published a series of comments on the Strategy for Africa, adopted by the European Commission in 2005.
It complained that EU aid to Africa is frequently linked to servicing of debts incurred by the continent’s governments, with the result that increases in aid can be “fictitious”.
It also urged the EU not to make aid conditional on good governance, pointing out that African countries have already devised their own peer review mechanism for monitoring such issues as the fight against corruption.

Commission meets Philippine civil society on country strategy
Philippine NGOs met European Commission representatives recently for discussions on issues in the Philippines’ strategy paper. According to Frances Lo of 11.11.11- Pilipinas, it was “an open dialogue with the EC reiterating that they are willing to continuously consult and discuss issues with concerned groups. They, however, stated that decisions are still eventually made in Brussels but that the Philippine delegation makes substantial recommendations and representations to the decision-making bodies.” The meeting was the result of initiatives by the Philippine NGOs to open a dialogue with the Commission.
The discussions covered health, the Mindanao peace process and the proposed Free Trade Agreement. The Commission sought to clarify questions and concerns raise by the NGO delegation, though this did not meet with full agreement of the NGO group. However, a space for continued dialogue was opened. Lo added that, “The groups (in the meeting) agreed to continue to pursue this dialogue space in the EC now that the EU-ASEAN FTA negotiations have been launched, and take to task the EC Ambassador on his commitment to disclose relevant information to the Philippine groups.”

Sources:
www.asia-programming.eu

Europe likely to accept White House nominee to World Bank
European governments look set to agree that another American can lead the World Bank, despite pressing for the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz.
Germany, the current holder of the EU’s presidency, is to accept Robert Zoellick, a former US trade representative and deputy secretary of state, as the successor to Wolfowitz, according to the news agency Bloomberg.
This is despite how some senior figures in European governments, including the UK’s Secretary for International Development Hilary Benn, have recently called for an end to the practice whereby the Bank’s chief is named by the White House.
In his previous role as trade representative, Zoellick helped bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organisation. He also sought to convince developing countries that they should scrap measures introduced to shield their economies from foreign competition.

Sources:
www.ipsnews.net
www.ft.com
www.bloomberg.com

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