CAP reform must go hand-in-hand with aid projects, says Patten

Date: 08/05/02

By David Cronin

EFFORTS to improve the delivery of EU aid will fail unless substantial progress is made by the end of 2004, warns external relations chief Chris Patten.

The commissioner also says he considers many criticisms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - blamed for protecting wealthier EU farmers at the expense of counterparts in poorer countries - as valid.

'The most important issue that we will have to resolve as a Union and a Commission in order to convince developing countries that we really have their interests at heart is the whole issue of CAP reform,' he said in a new report from the international development committee in the UK House of Commons.

Patten was one of several Commission contributors to an inquiry on EU development assistance, launched by the committee last September.

The report argues that the European Commission has not placed enough priority on the world's poorest countries. It cites unpublished World Bank data indicating that, while 63 of all aid granted by the industrialised world went to countries with high poverty levels in 1998, just 38 of Commission-managed aid did.

In his comments, Patten admitted that countries bidding for EU membership are receiving more than those with lower incomes: 'We spend in Poland, an enlargement candidate, every year more than we spend in Asia and Latin America together.'

But he vigorously defended this allocation of resources. One reason why the aid budgets managed by the Commission are less oriented towards low-income countries than national budgets managed by the Union's governments, he said, is because member states have decided that their funding for the 'near abroad' is best handled at EU level.

But this was sharply rebutted by Clare Short, the UK's secretary of state for international development. 'In this globalising world, this concept of a near abroad is becoming really very foolish,' she said.

The report's authors say the establishment of the new EuropeAid office last year has helped reduce the backlog of foreign aid projects. But they add there is confusion about the office, the board of which is chaired by Patten, and the Commission's directorates-general for external relations and development. This was accepted by Development Commissioner Poul Nielson, who told the committee that EuropeAid's relations with other Commission departments were a 'strange construction'.

Efforts to improve the delivery of EU aid will fail unless substantial progress is made by the end of 2004, warns External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.