David Cronin

THE HAGUE, Jul 4 2007 (IPS) – The European Commission has decided that its development aid activities should not focus on health and education, a senior official with the EU executive has admitted.
Anti-poverty activists have recently criticised the Commission for paying little heed to such issues as AIDS and illiteracy in a series of aid plans it is drawing up for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

Of 61 such country strategy papers so far drafted by the Commission for the 2007-13 period, just two recommend that health and five recommend that education should be a priority. Nineteen, on the other hand, suggest that transport should be a focal sector.

Françoise Moreau, head of the policy coherence unit in the Commission #39s directorate-general for development, has acknowledged that her institution has deliberately decided to put the emphasis on infrastructural projects.

This decision was taken, she said, to ensure that there could be an effective division of labour between aid programmes administered by the Commission and those of the EU #39s 27 member governments.

Our member states usually prefer to focus on health and education rather than transport, she told IPS. If we are to complement these efforts, this leads to the Commission focusing more on infrastructure.
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Moreau also claimed that ACP governments have asked the Commission to concentrate its aid activities on infrastructural projects.

Yet this conflicts with allegations made last week by the Stop AIDS Alliance. The campaign group said it had evidence that the government of Zambia, where an estimated 18 percent of the population are HIV positive, had asked the Commission to prioritise health in its aid planning but that the EU executive turned down the request.

Moreau was among the participants at the 50th anniversary congress of the Society for International Development (SID) at The Hague.

She nonetheless denied that EU aid is ignoring the health and education challenges of poor countries. Part of the money being given to poor countries in direct support to their national budgets is intended for health and education, she said.

The Commission is planning that half of the development aid that it administers should be given in the form of general budget support in the coming years. At present, the Commission is responsible for aid amounting to 10 billion euros (13.6 billion dollars) a year slightly less than a fifth of the Union #39s aggregate for official development assistance.

Moreau said it is difficult to assess what proportion of budget support ends up being spent on schools or hospitals. But the whole philosophy behind this form of aid transfers is that recipient countries should be put in charge of managing their own development, she added.

Paul Engel, director of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), an academic body based in the Dutch city of Maastricht, said it is appropriate that the Commission should not take the lead in health and education projects in poor countries as it does not have any significant powers over these sectors within Europe.

Over the past few years, the European commissioner for development Louis Michel has said on several occasions that he wishes to see better coordination between his institution #39s work in the aid field and that of national EU governments.

This issue has been addressed in response to the 2005 declaration on boosting the effectiveness of aid made at an international conference in Paris, while the main EU institutions have also agreed a code of conduct on avoiding duplication between the aid activities of the Commission and those of member states.

We have to make decisions about who is doing what, said Engel, who commented that the Commission is often seen as a separate donor to the 27 EU governments. We have 28 donors from Europe running around and doing development. It is very difficult for people from the ACP countries to understand this.

Engel complained, too, that the Commission #39s aid to countries recognised by the United Nations as least developed seems to be stagnating since 2004.

He contrasted this with efforts being made by Spain to spend more on least developed countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa. Spain has traditionally been interested in middle income countries, especially in Latin America, he noted.

Alex Wilks from the European Network on Debt and Development said that anti-poverty campaigners have a moral obligation to hold governments to account on aid.

While he expressed satisfaction that the EU gives almost 50 percent of all development assistance from rich countries to the poor and that it has made the most generous offers to increase aid in recent years, he said that governments have incentives to inflate certain figures.

You don #39t have to have grown up watching episodes of #39Yes Minister #39 to realise the games that can be played, he said, alluding to a popular British comedy about the relationship between politicians and civil servants.

According to Wilks, nearly one-third of all reported development aid from the Union last year did not involve the transfer of new resources to poor countries. That was because debt cancellation and assistance to refugees and foreign students living in Europe was included in aid statistics.

All 15 of the governments which belonged to the EU before it expanded eastwards in 2004 have undertaken to allocate at least 0.7 percent of their gross national income to official development assistance. But only four the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg have so far exceeded that target.

More than a third of the EU-15 is failing to honour pledges on aid increases, once #39inflation #39 of their aid statistics is taken into account, he said. But he said that the coterie of states that is performing well on aid must not relax. Even these countries have no room for complacency, he said.

Stefan van Wersch, head of the EU external policy department in the Dutch foreign ministry, argued that cooperation between his government and the Union #39s aid officials has improved considerably since 2000. If I was to say that in the 1990s, we used to have ministers who had a dislike for the EU in the development field, that would be a slight understatement, he said. It was even deeper than that.

He said that The Hague has an accord with the Commission that it would censure any of its officials working in poor countries who are deemed to be underperforming.

There #39s no reason for euphoria, he said. We have a deal that if people in the field are not living up to their commitments, we will give names.