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Launching of the REPAOC - Coordination SUD report on European Aid

The adoption of the Cotonou Agreement in 2000 raised many expectations amongst the citizens of the European Union (EU) member countries and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States. Incorporating two fundamental principles on which relations between the EU member countries and the ACP Group of States must be based, the agreement introduced the concepts of equality between partners and ownership of development strategies, as well as civil society participation, as some of the foundations of EUACP relations. Consequently, the European Development Fund (EDF), the EU’s main instrument for providing aid to ACP states, which is managed by the European Commission, should be programmed and implemented in a way that respects these fundamental principles.

Yet the report issued by REPAOC-Coordination SUD on the 10th EDF demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. Cotonou’s fundamental principles continue to be implemented only minimally on the ground. The EDF’s programming process does not make it possible to improve democratic “ownership” of poverty-reduction strategies, and contributes only slightly to citizen participation in defining, implementing and assessing the EC’s public development policies and co-operation strategies.

This report is the result of a close partnership between the Coalition of West and Central African NGO Platforms (REPAOC) and Coordination SUD, the national platform of French international solidarity NGOs. This report is also part of the partnership initiated in late 2005 between Coordination SUD and Gemdev, the Scientific Network on Globalisation and Development on financing for development.

REPAOC and Coordination SUD express several recommendations towards European institutions and ACP public authorities :

1. Increase the transparency of aid programming in order to foster full participation by civil society actors and national partners in the process, and ACP country sovereignty in defining their public policies.
2. Guarantee democratic ownership by letting the ACP governments, their national parliaments and civil societies freely determine the sectors on which to focus European aid.
3. Accept that European aid should be focused on healthcare, education or agriculture, rather than on major infrastructure, trade support and migration, especially when this is what citizens expect and when these areas have been identified as a national priority.
4. Ensure that aid helps to reduce gender inequalities and promote female autonomy.
5. Revise, in detail, the governance incentive tranche so that it does not create new economic or geopolitical conditions (relating to migration or anti-terrorism).
6. Gradually reduce the macroeconomic conditions connected to aid and use different funding instruments depending on the context of the recipient countries, without automatically resorting to budget support.
7. Incorporate the European Development Fund into the EC budget, all the while guaranteeing equal or greater funding to ACP states, so that it aims to stamp out poverty and inequality, and respects the principles of ownership, partnership and participation.
8. Ensure that country and regional strategy papers are adopted by the ACP parliaments and the European Parliament, and promote greater participation by European national parliaments in monitoring European aid.
9. Support the establishment of co-ordination frameworks for transparent public development policies. These should involve CSO representatives in all stages of the policies and stir donor countries and government to regularly report to the CSOs and, more broadly, all citizens.
10. Consider providing special organisational and institutional support to leadership groups and structures in the various CSO communities.
    
    

Read the summary of the report. Read the whole report (in French).

More information: Coordination SUD’s website

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