EU red tape adds insult to injury

Date: 12/06/1997

By Mark Turner

FINANCING to the tune of more than 3 million ecu for 27 torture rehabilitation projects has been delayed because of a procedural battle within the European Commission.

Although the funding was due to be rubber-stamped last week, the Commission's Joint Interpreting and Conference Service (JICS) blocked the projects for a week under new rules established by Secretary-General David Williamson last year.

The delay marked Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek's first unpleasant taste of procedures which laid down that any EU-funded seminars or conferences must first be cleared by the JICS, nominally to avert excessive charges, duplication of effort or other such anomalies.

Since some of the torture rehabilitation projects involve training staff in counselling techniques, the JICS demanded that it be consulted.

The new set-up is viewed with disdain by Commission experts, who see the process as unnecessarily bureaucratic and cumbersome, and has been largely ignored up until now. “If every piece of funding which could lead to a seminar needs to be agreed to by the JICS, things will grind to a halt,” said one official.

Such concerns were reinforced last month when aides to External Relations Commissioner Manuel Marin discovered that 32 projects under the EU-Mediterranean democracy programme had been blocked because some involved seminars.

Marin's cabinet immediately protested strongly, criticising the JICS's creeping competence and pointing out that human rights projects under Van den Broek's aegis had escaped such treatment.

Instead of eliciting more flexibility, their complaints had the perverse effect of sparking a new crack-down, leading to last week's events. “Here we are trying to save the world, and we get bogged down in small-minded procedural battles,” commented a Van den Broek aide wryly.