NGOs hit out at use of aid as EU foreign policy tool

By David Cronin

Date: 04/12/03

FEW, if any, of the 1.2 billion people in the world who eke out a miserable existence on less than €1 per day will be aware of what is happening in the EU's intergovernmental conference (IGC).

But results of the arcane discussions on framing the Union's constitution could have a significant bearing on how seriously the EU takes its commitments to lifting them out of poverty.

Development activists are perturbed by recent proposals from the Italian EU presidency, which were considered at the IGC "conclave" meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Naples last weekend (28-30 November).

The activists perceive a contradiction between the proposals and the draft constitution prepared by the future of Europe Convention. While the draft constitution states that the Union shall ensure consistency between its foreign policy and activities in trade, development and humanitarian affairs, an amendment tabled by Silvio Berlusconi's government says foreign policy should "not affect" those areas.

According to Eurostep, an umbrella group for charities including Oxfam and ActionAid, this would make the CFSP "superior to other policies of external action" such as trade, development and humanitarian aid.

The group says that this would put the EU Foreign Minister, likely to be appointed once the constitution enters into force, in charge of making trade and development policy "consistent" with the CFSP "and not the other way around".

While these worries might appear abstract, NGOs believe that the "war against terrorism", which followed the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, has already meant that aid has become subordinate to political concerns, rather than being solely aimed at the eradication of poverty.

A network of 280 British NGOs recently condemned what it called "moves in Europe to institutionalize aid as an explicit tool of foreign policy".

The British Overseas NGOs for Development (BOND) cited EU aid to Pakistan as an example.

A European Commission announcement from November 2001 specifically mentioned that assistance to the country was being increased because it had signed up to the international coalition of terrorism. This was despite a previous EU decision to impose sanctions on Islamabad due to the coup which saw General Pervez Musharraf seize power in 1999, its involvement in nuclear testing and poor track record on human rights.

"EU development aid should be committed to tackling poverty," says Richard Bennett, BOND's general secretary. "It is not an instrument for foreign policy or fighting the war against terror. A political stitch-up on the constitution risks compromising that poverty focus."

While anti-poverty activists generally concur that development aid should be more efficiently managed, they do not agree that the thrust of it should be changed.

Instead, it should concentrate on achieving the UN's millennium goals of halving abject poverty, ensuring all boys and girls get a chance to go to school and reducing by two-thirds the number of infants who die before their fifth birthdays, all by 2015.

Even though each EU member state has signed up to those goals, there appear to be well-founded concerns that they will not be realized without a massive increase in aid commitments for the world's poorest countries.

As it happens, the EU has actually been decreasing the proportion of aid for such countries from its annual budget. In 1990, the proportion of development assistance handled by the Commission, which went to countries in the low-income bracket, was 76%. A decade later this had fallen to 36%.

UN estimates, meanwhile, suggest that some €42 billion per year in additional development aid is needed to meet the millennium development targets. Data compiled by the Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicates the rich world is giving way below the amount required.

It estimates the average rate of development aid given by 22 of the world's top industrialized countries last year amounted to 0.23% of their national income; the target level set by the millennium goals is for that to increase to at least 0.7%.

Chris Patten, the European external relations commissioner, has come under fire from NGOs for backing a recently published OECD paper called A Development Cooperation Lens on Terrorism Prevention.

It suggested that donors should recalibrate their aid in the war against terror, for example, by helping them to improve their security systems.

NGOs are angered that, in a speech delivered to London's Overseas Development Institute last month, Patten did not call for aid earmarked for anti-terrorist activities in poor countries to be separate from, and additional to, "classical" development aid, which is designed to cut poverty.

"Combating terrorism is important and developing countries may need legitimate support in this area," a statement signed by NGOs from Australia, the US, Europe and Asia reads. "However, we reject the proposal that this support should come from relatively small - and overstretched - international aid budgets, whose focus must remain on poverty eradication."

Another concern raised by NGOs relates to the institutional framework within which the EU's Foreign Minister is likely to work.

The Italian presidency is advocating that the minister will be mandated by the Council of Ministers, even though he or she will also have a seat (as a vice-president) in the European Commission.

This, the campaigners reckon, could jeopardize transparency and accountability. They fear too that there will not be sufficient democratic scrutiny of the minister's work as he or she would not be answerable to the European Parliament to the same degree as other commissioners.

"The fact that poverty eradication is listed [in the draft constitution] as one of the EU's main objectives is welcome," says Mirjam van Reisen, a Brussels-based analyst of EU development policy. "But if we don't have confidence in the structures, we are going to have problems.

"What's being sought is a blind faith that the [EU] Foreign Minister will do the implementation of everything. That isn't how a democracy works."