EU states urged to work together on development

The European Commission will next week (28 February) publish a code of conduct to encourage member states to work together in developing countries rather than duplicate their efforts.

The code, which will be voluntary, hopes to see states share analysis, focus money on particular projects already being financed by other donors and co-ordinate more with other states on what should be their priorities for working in developing countries.

The Commission says the current duplication of efforts not only wastes time and money on the part of donors but also over-burdens developing countries which must deal with various officials, consultants and auditors from the donating states.

Last year in Tanzania there were 600 different health-related projects going on costing less than €1 million.

"Don’t you think that it’s almost impossible for a rather fragile administration to deal with so many interlocutors at the same time?" asked a Commission spokesman.

"So this is the challenge: who does what? Do we only want to be visible or do we also want to be effective and facilitate the task of our partners?" the spokesman added.

But the Commission has no powers to compel member states to follow its code and the issue of co-ordinating between donors and the EU is a controversial one, with member states often preferring to control what they spend their development aid on. "We can’t decide what work member states carry out in developing countries. We can only invite them to work jointly," the spokesman added.

Important projects could receive more funding if donors concentrated their resources rather than spent money on separate projects, he added.

Joanna Maycock, EU representative with ActionAid International, said the plan lacked clarity on what the Commission’s role would be. This was both in terms of whether the Commission would take the lead in co-ordinating activities or whether the Commission itself would take a backseat if it was deemed that a country was over-saturated with donors. It was important that if the number of donors in a country were reduced that those which were left gave good quality aid, Maycock said.

But the plan kicked off an important debate and if used properly could reduce the incidence of "aid orphans" whereby some countries languish with little help from donors, she said. "We need to ensure that countries don’t get completely forgotten and having this debate is useful," she said.

Evaluating the code of conduct would also be important, Maycock added.

ActionAid International favours setting up an international body to co-ordinate and scrutinise aid. "There is very little scrutiny and we are unable to force donors to live up to their commitments. We would like to see a properly legitimate international forum set up to act on this," Maycock said.

The European Commission will next week (28 February) publish a code of conduct to encourage member states to work together in developing countries rather than duplicate their efforts.