Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines

DEVELOPMENT: Aid with Solidarity, not Charity, Say EU Foundations

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Jun 3 2003 (IPS) - Sustainable development and solidarity, rather than charity, are the watchwords of the European foundations that met Sunday through Tuesday in the Portuguese capital.

”Assistance yes, charity no” was the premise that brought together more than 600 delegates of 324 institutions from 55 countries in the 14th annual congress of the European Foundation Centre (EFC).

The three days of debates in Lisbon highlighted the different approaches taken by foundations from the European Union (EU) and by those of the United States and Canada, with respect to projects in eastern and central Europe.

Especially in the case of U.S. foundations, ”in granting funds to central Europe, they basically want to see very concrete results, without interfering in their development, while the EU foundations provide aid based on goals that have been clearly delineated beforehand,” Anna Belia, executive director of the Soros Foundation Hungary, said in an interview with IPS.

EU foundations provide ”money for education, culture, sports and social questions, invariably defining the project quite clearly ahead of time, and they are less interested in financing international initiatives,” she added.

To illustrate her point, Belia cited the case of the Volks Wagen Foundation, ”which does not help finance projects in central and eastern Europe, but only in Germany, or at the most, initiatives that target Germans living abroad.”

The EFC conference, ”Foundations For Europe: The Citizen Facing Challenges of Globalisation”, drew together the heads of European, U.S. and Canadian foundations involved in philanthropic activities in Europe.

Also attending as guests were delegates from European universities and research institutions, as well as representatives of foundations from the former Soviet republics of central Asia, Turkey and Israel.

The developing world was represented by institutions from Brazil, Paraguay, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Malaysia and Pakistan, as well as Hong Kong, the special administrative region of China which was a British colony until 1997, and Macau, a former Portuguese territory that reverted to Chinese rule in 1999.

EFC Chairman Dario Disegni, from Italy, stressed at the close of the meeting that given the imminence of the enlargement of the EU, ”we should seriously consider strengthening our relations with the (new member) states, with Russia and with the countries of the eastern and southern Mediterranean.”

In May 2004, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia will join the EU.

But the EFC must also reach out to other regions, like sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, in ”the spirit and letter” of the United Nations objectives to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of people everywhere in the world, said Disegni.

”Our objectives should focus on citizen action in favour of peace,” and on holding meetings like the one the EFC has scheduled for Jun. 16-17 in Istanbul, dedicated to women and education, he concluded.

The EFC, which was created in 1989 by seven of Europe’s leading foundations, describes itself as an association ”dedicated to strengthening organised philanthropy, which is embedded in and supports civil society, in Europe and internationally.

”The EFC helps nurture efforts aimed at supporting independent, accountable and sustainable funders throughout the New Europe” and ”serves a core membership of more than 200 members, associates and subscribers; 250 community philanthropy initiatives; as well as a further 48,000 organisations linked through a network of information and support centres in 37 countries worldwide.”

One of the main questions discussed at the three-day EFC annual general assembly and conference was the concept of civil society.

Belia said that, without diminishing the importance of that concept, ”society is society as a whole, and we believe that we should talk instead of a ‘spirit of citizenship’.”

She stressed that ”globalisation has negative aspects for citizens, and in order to avoid these adverse effects, we must focus on globalisation with solidarity, especially in the world’s most vulnerable areas.”

The foundation that Belia heads carries the name of George Soros, one of the world’s richest people, who was born in 1930 in Budapest, Hungary and emigrated to London at the age of 17, where he graduated from the London School of Economics.

In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he set up an international investment fund through which he amassed a huge fortune.

The magnate reached the height of his power as a currency speculator in the late 1990s, when he brought the central banks of France and Britain to their knees after triggering a drop in the French franc and the British pound, and making an enormous profit.

But at the turn of the century, he began to dedicate himself almost exclusively to philanthropic activities through his Foundation, and has now become one of the staunchest defenders of ”smart globalisation”, concerned about preventing the collapse of the global financial system.

Belia said that ”in 2010, Soros will stop supporting Hungary and central Europe, to concentrate on needier parts of the world.”

The Soros Foundation has already significantly reduced its support for central Europe, ”while expanding its activity in Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet republics of central Asia,” she explained.

”Our foundation has already opened offices in Latin America, and has become active in Central America, through our office in Guatemala, and in South America, based in Peru,” she added.

The philosophy of the Soros Foundation and of all of the foundations that form part of the EFC ”is to provide aid based on sustainable development and solidarity, not charity, because alms are not the solution for such severe problems like world hunger,” said Belia.