Nielson attacks accountancy ‘war’ over aid scheme

Date: 31/05/01

By David Cronin

DEVELOPMENT Commissioner Poul Nielson this week declared himself furious at how bureaucratic inertia has turned a flagship €1.7-billion programme for reducing AIDS and improving public health in some of the world's poorest countries into an abject failure.

Only 16% of the funding, which the EU had allocated towards fighting the sexually transmitted disease between 1995 and 2000, was spent within the stipulated timeframe. "This is an illustration of the crisis we have, that things can't be implemented," said Nielson, who is supervising a radical overhaul of the Commission's overseas aid projects, aimed at making them effective.

Speaking ahead of today's (31 May) meeting of EU development ministers, Nielson singled out one agreement worth €10.5 million, which the Commission had signed with the UN's family-planning division, as the cause of particular frustration. Originally reached in 1997, its objective was to give out condoms in Bangladesh.

But a disagreement over the procurement rules followed by the UN officials meant that the initiative has never materialised. "There was a war of accountants, without anybody really caring whether these condoms were distributed," he explained.

Nielson did, however, express some satisfaction that the numbers of applicants for posts in the Commission's EuropeAid office - opened in January - has been higher than expected. Due to have a staff of 1,200, the office will be responsible for overseeing how 80% of the overseas aid budget managed by the EU executive is spent.

Earlier this year the EU's financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, criticised the Commission's development efforts for being too centralised in Brussels and having an inadequate field presence. As a result, the Commission has decided to strengthen its delegations in 22 poor regions throughout the world by assigning an additional two members of staff to each of them. It had hoped to boost its presence in a 23rd location - the Palestinian Authority - but has decided against this.

Over the past 12 months, the Commission has also been reviewing its "old" (projects in existence for over five years) and "dormant" (projects where there has been no movement for the past two years) commitments. Nielson said that he was taking steps to ensure that obsolete undertakings would be done away with and the funds awarded to them diverted to more worthy initiatives.

One problem with which EU officials are grappling is what to do with the estimated h20 billion of aid which the Commission has previously allocated but has been unable to spend because it hasn't designated enough personnel to oversee its use.

Meanwhile, Nielson proposed this week that the EU should gradually restore its financial assistance to the Ivory Coast to the levels before the country became engulfed in violence during the late 1990s. The amount involved had been roughly €100 million per year for most of that decade but fell to €10 million in 1999.

Development Commissioner Poul Nielson has declared himself furious at how bureaucratic inertia has turned a flagship €1.7 billion programme for reducing AIDS and improving public health in some of the world's poorest countries into an abject failure.