EU moves swiftly to create agency for rebuilding Balkans

Date: 10/06/1999

By Simon Taylor

THE EU is aiming to get the new agency which will administer the reconstruction programme for Kosovo and the Balkans up and running by the end of the summer.

Union leaders agreed at their summit in Cologne last week to create the new body, which will be based in the region and tasked with implementing the international community's programme for repairing the damage done to the region by the NATO air-strikes and President Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing.

The European Commission was instructed to come forward with detailed proposals for the new agency by the end of this month, with the aim of making it fully operational before the end of the summer.

Outgoing Commission President Jacques Santer said in Cologne that the action taken by the Union as part of the reconstruction effort must be "visible and rapid".

An aide close to Santer said the goal was to make the new agency "more efficient and be able to move more quickly", referring to a widespread belief that similar bodies in Bosnia were not as effective as the international community had hoped.

One Commission official described the agency as "our tool for organising reconstruction in the street", while leaving to other bodies the responsibility for organising an international donors' conference to raise the necessary funds, implementing the stability pact, and running a temporary administration in Kosovo.

François Lamoureux, deputy head of the Commission's Directorate-General for external relations (DG1A), said the new body would deal with the operational side of rebuilding the shattered infrastructure of countries in the region. He emphasised that it would be decentralised, with its headquarters in the Balkans, and would operate independently of the usual Commission structures.

The new body will bear similarities to the International Management Group (IMG) set up in Bosnia in 1993 which has handled the practical task of getting life in Bosnia back to normal. The 15-member IMG, which is run by most EU countries plus Norway, Switzerland and Turkey, has identified priority needs and projects requiring funding to international donors.

The European Investment Bank has estimated the cost of reconstruction in the Balkans at €25-30 billion over the next three to five years. Bank officials say the amount represents the bare minimum needed to get the region's economy working again.