WEEKLY SELECTION/DEVELOPMENT-POLITICS: Good Governance Divides EU and ACP

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Niccolo' Sarno

BRUSSELS, Feb 27 1999 (IPS) - The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of nations and the 15 members of the European Union (EU) have fallen out over whether “good governance” should be linked to development aid in the framework of the Lome Convention, the huge trade and aid agreement that links the two blocs.

The 71 ACP nations fear that the European request to include good governance among the “essential elements” of the Lome Convention – currently being renegotiated – is an attempt to impose new conditions to the pact.

The ACP group holds the view that the good governance concept covers a number of elements – openness, popular participation, efficiency and accountability – that cannot be put under one roof.

“How can any government become accountable to someone else apart from the people who elected it?” says ACP Secretary General Peter Ng’andu Magande.

The European Union says it is only suggesting mechanisms that facilitate a development model that guarantees human rights and social progress. It sees good governance as supplementing existing essential elements “by adding a dimension relating to the management of resources whilst also contributing to the efficiency of assistance.”

But most ACP leaders say the EU request would mean Lome benefits would depend on the application of European social and political standards.

“To us, good governance is is not an element of conditionality but rather an objective to be reached, an ideal,” says Cote d’Ivoire’s Minister for commodity products Guy Alain Gauze. He spoke during the first EU/ACP Ministerial Negotiating conference held Feb 8-9 in Dakar, Senegal.

The three essential elements binding both parties under the current Lome IV Convention are human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law.

“If these existing essential elements are strengthened, then there is already good governance,” says Magande.

Good governance is mentioned in the current Convention but it is not seen as an essential element. No EU agreement with other countries or group of countries includes good governance.

“Good governance was not included in previous Lome Conventions,” noted Taoufik Ben Abdallah of the Dakar-based Non- Governmental Organisation ENDA-Third World in Dakar. “Following existing conditionalities is already a lot of work for ACP administrations.”

George Saitoti, Kenyan minister for development and president of the ACP Council of ministers told the conference “there are bound to be problems in the execution of this (good governance) principle considering the wide range in the levels of institutional development in ACP countries.”

A “non-execution” clause in the Convention says that if one of the parties considers that another has failed to comply with one element, the first party may take measures, including the suspension of the Convention’s application.

The ACP nations, however, say they do not accept the idea that a new Lome Agreement, due to come into force in February next year, could allow the unilateral withdrawal of development assistance whenever the EU considers that any of the essential principles have not been respected.

“I don’t think any government can say it has achieved 100 percent good governance,” said Magande. “There should be a joint EU/ACP body which can judge if a country has infringed an essential element.”

EU and ACP ministers failed in Dakar to agree on the establishment of two new institutions – a Council of Foreign Ministers and a Summit of Heads of State – that the ACP has proposed to raise the political level of dialogue.

Cooperation under the Lome Convention is now suspended only with Togo – where the first Convention was signed in 1975 – after EU observers said massive irregularities had been observed during last year’s national elections.