Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

DEVELOPMENT-EU: New Signs of Hope Arise

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Sep 1 2004 (IPS) - Leading civil society groups are cautiously optimistic that development will rise among EU priorities.

The appointment of Belgian Louis Michel as European Union (EU) development commissioner, a new development committee in the European Parliament, and the Dutch presidency’s renewed focus on development policy are all signs that aid is creeping up the agenda, non-governmental organisations (NGO) say.

“Louis Michel’s appointment is more than could have been reasonably expected,” Giampiero Alhadeff, secretary-general of the NGO Solidar told IPS. “Until July we were hearing that the appointment of a strong individual was very unlikely because the big member states were angling for more powerful commissions (posts) and there were not many potential candidates. Louis Michel’s name changed all that. The signs are he will succeed.”

Michel has set ambitious goals for his term in office. He said soon after his nomination Aug. 12 that one of his first tasks would be to persuade member states to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national income (GNI) for official development assistance.

Michel also plans cooperation projects with the “greatest of efficiency” and to pay particular attention to the environmental aspects of such projects.

Meanwhile the European Parliament’s 34-strong development committee is showing “promising signs” under the presidency of Italian Luisa Morgantini, Alhadeff said. Morgantini is a veteran in development policy.

With the support of “able” vice-presidents such as Max van den Berg, formerly with Novib, the Dutch arm of Oxfam, German Michael Gahler and Lithuanian Danuté Budreikaite, Alhadeff says the new term has “kicked off with a bang.”

In its first week the committee has initiated a plan to highlight the millennium development goals (MDGs). It then announced Tuesday (Aug. 31) that Morgantini will lead a delegation of six members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to Darfur, Khartoum and Chad Sep. 2-7 to meet Sudanese authorities, aid workers, refugees and African Union observers.

The humanitarian crisis in Sudan will continue to dominate the committee’s agenda in the coming weeks as MEPs look for a political solution.

Dutch development minister Agnes Van Ardenne told the development committee Tuesday that sanctions would be considered against Sudan’s oil interests if its government failed to act on the UN resolution to disarm Janjaweed militia.

But the development committee must do more to “strengthen the integrity” of development cooperation and humanitarian aid in the EU’s agricultural, commercial and foreign policy agenda, Simon Stocker, director of Eurostep told IPS.

The Dutch presidency is making moves to strengthen development policy with new initiatives to turn new EU member states from aid recipients to donors.

But despite positive signs, NGOs say significant challenges remain to EU development policy. One of these is to make sure that development cooperation is not affected by security policies, says Stocker.

EU foreign ministers endorsed a draft declaration in March that held counter-terrorism as “a key element of political dialogue” with other countries. The declaration included proposals for “targeted technical assistance” to “priority countries”, and said the EU would introduce counter-terrorism concerns into “all relevant external assistance programmes.”

Stocker is concerned that the proposed division of development and foreign policies in the new European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, “only helps to confirm” such an approach.

“This doesn’t mean that there will be no attention given to development, but underneath the organisation of EU’s management of its development tools and policies could in reality diminish the role of development policy in favour of security concerns,” he said.

Alhadeff says lobby groups are ready to challenge these moves. “Civil society is also getting itself organised,” he said.