DEVELOPMENT: EU Policy Disappearing, Groups Say

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Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Oct 4 2004 (IPS) - Development groups say EU proposals to simplify external assistance will "herald the end of an identifiable development policy."

Eurostep, a network of 16 European non-governmental organisations says European Commission proposals to reform legal instruments governing European Union (EU) external actions "make no provision for a separate instrument" for development policy.

"Instead, development cooperation is mixed with economic cooperation within a single instrument providing a legal base for the EU’s cooperation with countries all over the world, except those in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood," it said after seeing a draft of the proposals.

The European Commission, the EU executive arm, adopted proposals last week to replace the current system of external aid with what it called "a simpler, more efficient framework."

EU external assistance and cooperation is currently delivered through a range of regional instruments. The EU executive says that managing programmes with "such a mixed and complex set of instruments in an efficient and coordinated way has become an increasingly difficult task."

The proposals involve slimming down the commission’s wide range of geographical and thematic instruments for development aid, which it says has grown up in an "ad-hoc manner over time."

These include an instrument for pre-accession assistance to candidate countries such as Turkey and Croatia, and potential candidate countries in the Western Balkans.

The European neighbourhood and partnership instrument will cover third countries participating in the European neighbourhood policy, namely countries of the south and eastern Mediterranean, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the countries of the southern Caucasus.

A development cooperation and economic cooperation instrument will cover countries, territories and regions not eligible for assistance under either the pre-accession instrument or the European neighbourhood and partnership instrument. A new instrument for stability aims to tackle crises and instability in third countries and will also address "trans-border challenges" including nuclear safety and non-proliferation, and the fight against trafficking, organised crime and terrorism.

Two existing instruments governing humanitarian aid and macro-economic assistance remain in place.

Eurostep says that mixing development and economic policies in one legal instrument will lead to confusion of purpose. "The result will inevitably be the end of an identifiable development policy," said Eurostep director Simon Stocker.

Luis Morago-Nicolas, head of policy at the development NGO ActionAid International says a "mixing of instruments" will mean that development priorities will be under increased pressure. ActionAid International is also a member of a task force on the financial perspectives convened under the Confederation for Relief and Development (CONCORD), a European NGO group.

"In this respect we still believe it is vital to maintain an independent development policy where allocations by country and activity are taken on the basis of poverty indicators and not on the basis of the EU’s own security agenda," he told IPS.

The NGOs are concerned that the commission’s proposals will contravene the recently approved EU constitutional treaty and undermine its credibility.

"This lack of a clear political space for development contradicts both EU’s development policy statement of 2000 and the constitutional treaty, which provide the legal base for developing cooperation with all developing countries based on a core commitment towards poverty eradication," Morago-Nicolas says.

The NGOs say the commission’s proposals may also jeopardise efforts to build a coherent approach to development aimed at poverty eradication and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by heads of state in September 2000.

Denise Auclair, EU development policy officer at CIDSE (Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité), a coalition of 15 Catholic development organisations, says the EU must remember its commitment to the MDGs.

"EU decision makers need to keep in mind these commitments," Auclair told IPS. It must decide whether clubbing the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 30 industrialised countries) with the poorest countries "can really ensure effective poverty eradication measures."

Stocker says separate legal instruments should be established for development cooperation and economic cooperation. "This would not only ensure that the policy objectives for each of these policies can be pursued towards relevant partner countries, but would also reflect the provisions set out in the current treaties of the union, and in the constitutional treaty."

NGOs are concerned also that the proposals may exclude the European parliament, the only directly elected institution of the EU, from setting priorities for development policy and their implementation, whilst considerably increasing the power of the commission.

The European parliament still has the power to reject these regulations, and NGOs are urging it to do so. A Eurostep briefing paper on the commission’s new proposals is being circulated to members of the European parliament’s development committee and other relevant bodies. "There is a real likelihood that the European parliament’s development committee could reject these proposals if they stay as proposed by the commission, as they would undermine the democratic nature of the European Union," Florent Sebban, policy advisor at Eurostep told IPS.