DEVELOPMENT-EU: Domination Tied Into Aid Package

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

THE HAGUE, Sep 29 2004 (IPS) - The EU aid package is a large one, but packed also with paternalism and claims to domination, development experts said at the end of an aid conference.

“European development policy is an ambiguous mixture of generosity and ideological dogmatism,” Nadji Khaoua, professor at the University of Annaba in Algeria told IPS at the conference.

The two-day conference on ‘Europe and the South: A New Era – European Development Cooperation: towards policy renewal and a new commitment’ took place at The Hague Sep. 27-28. It was organised by the Society for International Development (SID), a Rome-based international non-governmental association of individuals and organisations with members and activities in 125 countries.

The meeting brought together some 250 experts from Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Asia to explore relations between foreign policy, security, trade, and development.

“Despite Europe’s own appalling experience with the privatisation of public services, development politicians and officials from Brussels insist that the countries of the South privatise water and electricity facilities,” Khaoua said.

The failure of British and U.S. privatisation of railway and electricity services should have taught Europeans that public managed services can be a better alternative, he said.

“And yet European officials and representatives come to our countries pretending that they can teach us something against practical experience,” Khaoua said. “This is typical of European development policy. Europe must learn to conceive a development policy that takes into account the diversity of the countries of the South.”

Many European participants, including EU officials and members of non-governmental organisations agreed that European development policy is heavily bureaucratic and inconsistent, leading to ineffective use of a considerable amount of money.

Outgoing development commissioner Poul Nielson admitted at the closing session that European development policy is “overloaded with ex-ante controls” that make effective application of plans almost impossible.

This excess of controls comes from suspicions of corruption in the management of EU funds, and also from member countries’ distrust of European structures in Brussels, he said.

“Sometimes, while attending the obscure meetings of the European development administration, I like to ask, dear friends, do we not have a more complicated way of doing things,” Nielson said.

He said European bureaucracy and the controls established by member countries should leave European development policy “at least one hand free for doing what we should be doing.”

This was a common theme through the conference. “European development assistance is the worst targeted,” former development commissioner Dieter Frisch said at the conference. Multiple administrative set-ups rarely cooperate with one another, he said.

Louk Box, president of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes closed the conference Tuesday with a call to establish a coherent framework of EU structures and for efficient use of resources.

“Europe must assume its responsibilities, and live up to the challenge of development,” Box said. “Let’s hope that the challenge of fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) impose this coherence upon European cooperation policies with the South.” Box pointed out that reform and rationalisation of EU development policy is under way.

Individually and through a common pool managed by the European Commission, the EU executive arm, the 25 EU member countries provide a little more than half of total world aid which is estimated at 58 billion dollars a year. But much of this money is lost through poor management and heavy bureaucratic procedures.

Experts from the South insisted that the EU must learn to respect the uniqueness of recipient countries and to provide for their participation in the conception and implementation of development assistance.

“Why should bureaucrats from Brussels come to Tanzania to tell smart and insightful local people there how to do things,” said Khamis Mwinyimbegu, consultant with the Netherlands Cameroon Council, an NGO engaged in development projects in western and southern Africa.

European development leaders must consider also that development is not a one-way process, participants said. “European and North American officials should have learnt by now that they need us as much as we need them,” Lallan Surajnandan Prasad, professor of business economics at the University of Delhi in India told IPS. “Development is not alms, but a process that should enrich both parts.”

If European development politicians cannot accept this, they can keep their aid, Prasad said. “We don’t want development programmes with unacceptable conditionality attached.”