Poor people in Asia are losing out to ‘pet projects’ and Latin lobbyists

Date: 18/03/04

Parliament's vote to reduce aid to Asia by E250m was a result of political manoeuvres, claims Anders Wijkman

ONLY 44% of EU aid money is going to low-income countries. The objective in the future has to be to raise that percentage.

In November last year, a majority in the European Parliament voted to split the Union's Asia and Latin America (ALA) regulation into two parts.

Around €3.8 billion has been allocated to the two regions in 2003-06, but the Parliament voted to reduce aid to Asia by some €247 million.

I could not accept the proposal on the ALA regulation. Most of the poor in the world live in Asia, not Latin America.

This vote was an unnecessary political manoeuvre at the behest of those in Parliament who have special and strong ties with Latin America. There was nothing of real substance that motivated this move.

Sometimes it is too easy to base decisions on motives other than poverty reduction.

These would include convenience, trade and geographical relations.

Ideally, we should have one major regulation dealing with development cooperation, not a series of regulations. The latter invites people to support their pet projects.

Of course, we will always have to take decisions in terms of distribution across regions. I don't think we can avoid that. But there are also strong arguments to take cross-cutting issues such as HIV/AIDS and to work on these from a more thematic, rather than a regional, basis.

What the Union has to do is make sure that it introduces more coordination in external policy.

The most obvious lack of coherence is between aid and trade. We take with one hand and give with the other.

This is particularly the case with agricultural subsidies. They make life very difficult for farmers in poor countries.

Very few deputies have any real experience of development cooperation. I have worked in Africa for the Red Cross and the UN Development Programme.

And, regardless of where I've gone in Africa, I've very often found more canned food from Europe in shops than fresh food produced locally.

In hotels and restaurants - even though they have plenty of fresh fruit around, they don't serve you that. They serve you canned food from Europe.

A very important issue that will have to be debated intensely in the coming years is what the European Commission and the Union should concentrate on with their sizeable aid budget.

Where does our comparative advantage - over bilateral aid at member states' level - lie?

There are a number of areas that require a global response.

These include HIV and AIDS, climate change, fisheries and forestry issues. It is suitable for the EU to get involved in these issues, especially when the US is taking a backseat.

When I was elected to the EuropeanParliament in 1999, the Commission decided to take a role in tackling climate policy. There are many other issues in which it has done too little.

With HIV and AIDS, it has been catching up. But it is still doing too little.

EU aid could also be used in politically sensitive situations. Both the EU and the UN can have a comparative advantage over bilateral donors in taking countries out of conflict.

If Zimbabwe comes back to some type of normality, for example, there will probably be a need to reform the police and the penal system.

It would be difficult to get sufficient results in these areas through bilateral aid only. The EU can have a role to play in good governance, human rights and conflict prevention.

I also think we should be more concerned about the climate problem.

We need to help poor countries develop more preparedness for the obvious increase in extreme weather conditions that are going to take place in the future.

Storms and droughts will hit developing countries dramatically.

But we currently have very few mechanisms to deal with such problems. This must change.

• Anders Wijkman is a Swedish MEP with the European People's Party group. He is a vice-chairman of the European Parliament's development committee.

The Latin American lobby is beating the Asian lobby hands down when it comes to acquiring cash for development, argues Marieke Sanders-Ten Holte

The overwhelming majority in the European Parliament voted in November to have two aid regulations - one for Asia and one for Latin America.

There was nothing I could do about this. Even though I don't agree with having two regulations, I accepted it.

The current Asia and Latin America [ALA] regulation was adopted ten years ago.

Since then, although Parliament has expressly requested two separate regulations for two very different regions, the Commission yet again tabled one proposal, by means of which it wanted to update the existing regulation.

Anyone would think that Parliamentary resolutions on this subject had never existed.

Asia is by far the poorest continent in the world. But Latin America wanted a clear signal that Europe would be supporting it.

I talked to lots of Latin American ambassadors about this.

The Latin lobby is doing a very good job. They have a strong lobby and I don't see anything wrong with that.

The Asian lobby, however, definitely needs to get more organized. We hear much more from Latin America than from Asia in Parliament.

This vote will not change the overall budget much. There will still be a balance of 60% for Asia and 40% for Latin America.

The Latin Americans want to have more money sent to them. This is also what the Spanish MEPs want to do. One of the big problems in Latin America is that it does not have enough projects to absorb the money already sent there.

There is a huge backlog of projects in the continent.

The ALA report will come back on the EU agenda during the Dutch presidency, probably in September. I'm quite sure that the call for two regulations will not be accepted by the Council of Ministers. This is not something the Dutch will agree to.

As a Liberal, I believe there should be not more regulations but less. It costs a lot of money to set up management teams for new regulations. I would be very much in favour of more streamlining.

What we could have is one regulation with two different chapters, one focusing on Asia, the other on Latin America.

Then we could have a different approach for regions.

I thought this would be a good solution. And, during negotiations, the External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten said he would accept it. That was as much as I could get in talks with the Commission but the Parliament said it definitely wanted to have two regulations. And as the rapporteur on the issue, I set great store by passing on that message.

The Millennium Development Goals stated that the key aim of development cooperation is the fight against poverty and its ultimate eradication. Unfortunately, I failed to find this spelled out clearly in the Commission's proposal on the ALA regulation.

My first point was that 35% of expenditure in Asia and Latin America should be set aside for social infrastructure, including health and education, something we have included in the EU's budget on a regular basis since 2001.

I do think we are taking the Millennium Development Goals seriously, but it will be very difficult to reach them.

It also needs to be remembered that it takes two to tango. The developing countries also need to do more.

But there are encouraging signs. I have recently come back from the session of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in Addis Ababa. There I saw a completely different attitude on the part of developing countries than there had been before.

I think they are discussing subjects much better and taking issues much more seriously.

• Dutch Liberal MEP Marieke Sanders-Ten Holte is also a vice-president of the Parliament's development committee and drafted its most recent report on aid to Asia and Latin America.

Two MEPs discuss the European Parliament's decision to split the aid plan for Latin America and Asia into separate parts.

http://www.eurostep.org/strategy/ala/ALA_review.html http://www.eurostep.org/strategy/ala/ALA_review.html

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