By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Feb 11 2004 (IPS)

Development issues are coming home to the EU in the face of its enlargement from May 1 this year.

As ten new member states prepare to join the European Union (EU) May 1 (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia), officials and independent groups see a positive impact of the change, but also challenges.

Most of the accession countries have until recently been receiving EU aid. Their economies may not support the commitments that would match EU development policy, members of some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say.

The European Commission which initiates and executes EU policies is optimistic. "There is huge political will and enthusiasm from people in the new member states," Jose Javier Paniagua from the Commission’s development office said at a joint European Policy Centre and World Bank meeting Wednesday. The meeting discussed EU development policy after enlargement.

"Although the member states have a small budget, they have lots of good systems and can help the existing member states," he said. Existing structures can serve as "a transmitter of information and best practice."

The Commission and some member states have been organising development workshops on subjects of interest to new member states. A task force has been set up to help current member states support the new ones.

"Our first effort has to be to help the new member states put the basic structures required for the EU’s development policy into place," says David Donoghue, Ireland’s director-general for development cooperation. "It has to be a division of labour between the new member states and the old." Ireland holds presidency of the EU for the first half of this year.

Franz Kaps, senior advisor at the World Bank said that neither accession countries nor the current member states should rush the process. "The new member states first need to digest what development policy is about and then decide what to do about it," he said. "But our expectations cannot be too high."

The new member states will be expected to develop and implement their own development policy.

They will also be expected to contribute to the tenth European Development Fund (EDF) through which developing countries receive assistance from the EU. The ninth and current EDF has a budget of some 15.8 billion dollars for developing countries over a period of five years.

Some NGOs are concerned that the new member states will not be able to meet such requirements. Many of the accession countries have extremely low levels of overseas development assistance.

"We’ve got to be flexible and allow them to develop themselves but I hope that they will enter into the ‘value system’ of the EU’s development policy and accept that over time they will play their own part in the values of the policy," Donoghue said.

Oxfam says there are only a few development NGOs in the accession countries, but many of them are active in areas where NGOs in existing member states are not.

"Hopefully, civil society in new member states will stand up against narrow definitions of security and call on their governments to support the global fight against poverty," Jo Leadbeater from Oxfam told IPS.

A number of NGOs express concern that enlargement will lead the EU to focus on development of bordering countries.

"Securing peace and development in the near abroad is of course a legitimate concern for the enlarged EU," said Leadbeater. "Yet a focus on the near abroad must not stop the EU from allocating adequate resources to those most in need, particularly in forgotten emergencies such as Liberia or the Democratic Republic of Congo."

Commission spokesperson for development Jean-Charles Ellermann- Kingombe said "we realise that our development policy will not change suddenly from one day to the next." He said the Commission will ensure that African, Caribbean and Pacific countries do not suffer as a result of the enlargement.

"In the past few years the EU has become involved in new engagements in new geographical areas such as the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq," he told IPS. "The bloc has been able to do this with additional funds and not at the expense of other developing countries."

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