Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines

DEVELOPMENT-EU: Parliament Urged to Get Policy ‘Back on Track’

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jan 23 2006 (IPS) - Development groups are urging members of the European Parliament to accept proposals later this week that will put the European Union’s development policy “back on track”..

Proposed changes to the European Union (EU) development cooperation and economic cooperation instrument, which governs the way the bloc delivers aid to developing countries, will be presented to the development committee of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Wednesday (Jan. 25).

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, delivered its original proposals for the EU development cooperation instrument in September 2004.

The European Parliament’s development committee rejected these measures in March 2005, saying they would bring developing and non-developing countries in an “unnatural alliance”, and would diminish the power of the Parliament on development policy.

After more than a year of negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and European Council, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the legislation, Irish Conservative MEP Gay Mitchell, has put the issue back on the agenda of the development committee with a new set of amendments that would change substantially the nature of the original Commission proposal if they were adopted.

Mitchell will present these amendments to members of the development committee Wednesday.

Eurostep, a Brussels-based network of development non-governmental organisations (NGOs), has welcomed the proposed amendments, saying they would establish a “clearly defined” enabling instrument covering aid to developing countries.

“After a year of deadlock in negotiations to establish new legislation covering the EU’s aid to developing countries, the EU is now moving closer to putting in place a legal instrument dedicated to its cooperation with developing countries,” Eurostep director Simon Stocker said Monday.

The Commission’s original proposals combined the EU’s relations with developing and industrialised countries.

Development groups say these measures sought to deal in the same way with the United States, Japan and developing countries in Asia or Latin America or African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

Eurostep fears that such proposals would have inevitably resulted in “confusion and ambiguity of purpose” in the EU’s relations with developing countries, and would have compromised the “integrity” of the bloc’s development policy.

Mixing developing and developed countries is contrary to the EC Treaty, which gives a “specific legal basis to development cooperation different from the legal basis for relations with industrialised countries,” Florent Sebban, Eurostep’s policy advisor told IPS Monday.

However, Mitchell’s amendments, which still need to be adopted by Parliament, seek to make a clear separation between the EU’s relations with developing and industrialised countries.

Mitchell has excluded any cooperation with industrialised countries, for which Eurostep says the development cooperation instrument is neither appropriate nor relevant.

“This separation and clarity is essential for ensuring transparency in EU cooperation with poor countries, and in strengthening the EU’s role as a responsible global player in the world,” said Stocker.

The original proposals also left the adoption of the thematic and geographic programmes to the Commission, with a minor role for the Council and no role for the European Parliament.

Development groups say this would have created “the basis for a development policy that is less and less democratic and therefore could have been moving even further away from EU citizens’ concerns.”

Under the new proposals, Mitchell aims to reaffirm Parliament’s role in determining regional and thematic priorities of EU aid.

Eurostep says by adopting the new amendments, the Parliament will strengthen development and thus ensure the future role of the EU as a truly global player in this area of external policy in which it is clearly strongest.

“We fully support these proposals. It is vital for Parliament to have a real role in setting priorities, an aspect missing from the Commission’s original proposals,” said Stocker.

“Preserving Parliament’s powers over setting development policy priorities will ensure greater levels of accountability, in line with the expectations from its citizens, and maintain a focus on the role of the EU in achieving the Millennium Development Goals,” he added.

Eurostep is encouraging MEPs to support the amendments proposed by Mitchell.

“We feel that it is the role of the European Parliament to fight for a strong development policy and reintegrating industrialised countries in this instrument would dramatically jeopardise Europe’s ability to play a constructive role in the world and more specifically the role of the European Parliament in European Commission’s external relations,” said Sebban.

“Following all the commitments made by EU heads of states last year, the EC needs to deliver, and this instrument can provide a useful tool for the EC to contribute to the establishment of a fairer world if the amendments suggested by Mitchell are adopted,” he added.

The amendments will be discussed by the development committee Wednesday before a vote in committee in February.

The report will then be discussed in the plenary session of the European Parliament and is likely to be adopted by Parliament in April 2006. The issue will then be discussed by European heads of state later in the year.