Ministers to approve aid policy shake-up

Date: 02/11/00

By Gareth Harding

EU GOVERNMENTS are set to approve a radical overhaul of the bloc's development policy next week designed to ensure that it has a consistent message and clearly defined goals.

Development ministers are expected to rubberstamp the European Commission's blueprint for change, which was unveiled earlier this year, at a meeting in Brussels next Friday (10 November).

Development Commissioner Poul Nielson said this week that the Union's €9-billion aid budget - which makes it the world's largest donor - was currently in a state of crisis, and described the changes needed to put it right as "quite profound". He told European Voice that adoption of the policy paper by ministers next week would be a "very big step" which would place the EU in the "mainstream of good-donor thinking".

Union governments called on the Commission to draw up a document outlining the EU's policy priorities more than two and a half years ago. But when the Commissioner published the long-awaited paper in April this year, it was criticised by development groups and several northern European member states for lacking concrete proposals.

However, a text drawn up by the French presidency gives its full support to the executive's twin goals of alleviating poverty and integrating developing countries into the world economy. It also endorses the list of areas where the Union can bring 'added value' to the development debate drawn up by the Commission. These are trade, regional integration, transport, food security and economic reform.

The presidency text, which is likely to form the basis of the ministerial agreement at next week's meeting, lays particular emphasis on the three 'Cs' of development policy. It calls for greater coordination of ministers' positions in international bodies, greater 'complementarity' between the EU's development policy and that of its member states, and more coherence between the Union's development goals and its other policies.

Despite subtle differences in emphasis, officials say member states have no objections to the Commission's overarching aims. But many are concerned about how the noble goals set out in the paper will be translated into practice. "Good policy is fine but it is action that counts," said one diplomat.

Nielson will present ministers with an action plan next week detailing the steps the Commission intends to take to shake up the way aid is doled out. The former Danish development minister says it will take at least two years for the new ideas to start trickling down into legislation and admits that, until then, the Union's aid policy will continue to look "old fashioned". But he believes that by the end of his term of office in 2004, the EU will have a development policy it can "feel proud of".

EU governments are set to approve a radical overhaul of the bloc's development policy designed to ensure that it has a consistent message and clearly defined goals.