The Week in Europe
By David Jessop

For the last few weeks a debate has been underway in Europe and in the ACP
over the ability or otherwise of the European Commission (EC), the world's
largest aid donor, to deliver development programmes. The dialogue is being
conducted over the Internet and involves officials, members of the European
Parliament, non-governmental organisations and others in civil society.

Although the issues raised have been varied, many of the comments turn on
the extent to which new arrangements for the operation of the EC's
Development Directorate will help or hinder the future implementation of
development policy and the disbursement of aid.

The background to this debate is the much-questioned decision to divorce aid
delivery from development policy by separating the Development Directorate
from the delivery of EC assistance by setting up a new agency to deliver all
of the EC's aid programmes. This approach, it is said, will make
disbursement more rapid and EC funded aid projects more effective. 

As matters stand at present, the European Commission allocates enormous sums
of money to development projects in the ACP and elsewhere. However, for
years it has been unable to deliver an ever-increasing number of the
commitments it has made. The reasons for this are many. They include
bureaucratic inefficiencies on the part of both the EC and recipient
nations; political infighting; rules, sometimes so Kafkaesqe as to halt
projects or the disbursement of agreed funds for many years; staff who have
no incentive to deliver rapidly; and recipient nations with political
objectives that have priority over development.

None of this has been helped by decisions to constantly reorganise aid
delivery mechanisms thereby setting back, sometimes for years, the ability
of the EC to deliver programmes already agreed. The matter in the ACP is
further compounded by the fact the Cotornou Partnership Agreement signed in
June of this year introduces new players into the aid equation. As with EC
co-operation agreements with other parts of the world the new ACP/EU
arrangement makes available funds for working with civil society so as to
try to increase the velocity of development.

Although the on-line debate has been conducted in polite terms there is a
seismic underlying theme: does the EC's Development Directorate as a policy
formulation body alone have any future viable role?

In an ACP context, this question is far from academic. For the Caribbean a
key component of the post Lomé negotiations was the achievement of a roll
over of the existing EU/ACP trade regime. This was in order that during the
period 2000-2008 more developed ACP nations might prepare for an economic
transition to something close to full trade reciprocity with Europe in the
ten to fifteen years thereafter. 

Yet the picture that is rapidly emerging is of a DG Development bureaucracy
divided over how to deal with the philosophical changes implied by a policy
that stresses economic transition and a role for the private sector.
Moreover it seems that many individuals with the responsibility for
programme delivery are far from willing to recognise the new political,
practical and time sensitive imperatives for economic transition that have
been set by ACP and EU negotiators.

To make matters worse, those who helped design and negotiate the key trade
aspects of the new Convention are no longer members of the Development
Directorate but are now members of Directorate Trade. This EC body has a
remit that aims to bring about as rapidly as possible a world in which
preferential and special arrangements give way to free trade managed through
the World Trade Organisation's (WTO).

The difficulties arising from the Trade/Development divide are becoming
apparent. Just four months after the EU and ACP signed the Cotornou
Partnership agreement, the EC's Trade Directorate has proposed that Least
and Less Developed nations (LLDCs) should have quota and duty free access to
the EU market. This proposal, while welcome, threatens the future of the
Caribbean's sugar, rice, banana and rum industries if implemented as
proposed as it is contrary to the spirit and letter of the new Cotourno
Treaty. Despite the origin of the LLDC proposals in the Trade Directorate,
ACP nations wishing to negotiate are initially expected to deal with a
Development Directorate which no longer has any capacity or responsibility
for trade policies. Even more extraordinary, will be a process that will see
the Development Directorate funding the ACP to negotiate with the Trade
Directorate while at a later stage yet another part of the EC will have to
provide support to offset damage caused to the ACP by presumed success of
the same EC Trade negotiators. 

While senior figures in DG Development recognise that any acceleration in
the end of preference will require significant compensatory packages to
enable industries to adjust, rationalise and become competitive, the whole
aid disbursement process is not built to react in either the time scale or
the ways envisaged by trade negotiators. Put another way, officials in DG
Trade at best recognise the need to find, as a matter of urgency,
significant packages of money to facilitate the process of economic
transition. But at worst others in DG Development, seem unable to recognise
that the needs of industries in transition are fundamentally economic and
bear little relationship to the traditional concerns about social change.

What may be emerging is the need for some new type of agency staffed by very
different people able to administer transitional economic programmes in ACP
and other developing nations in time scales that relate to needs of the
economies and industries concerned. That is to say different types of
individuals to those who have traditionally administered socially oriented
Government-to-Government programmes.

Understandably those who negotiate trade policy tend not to become involved
in the minutiae of how packages of assistance to ease any transition will be
delivered. Unfortunately, the danger is that the hard fought trade
agreements contained in the Cotonou partnership agreement will have little
value if there is not clarity about how, from where and, most importantly,
by when transitional support will be provided.

David Jessop is the Executive Director of the Caribbean Council for Europe
and can be contacted at [log in to unmask]
November 3rd, 2000 



 


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