THE FUTURE OF THE EC DEVELOPMENT BUDGET
Coordination and Complementarity
51. The chronic underspends of the Community's development
budget reveal an organisation more concerned with political headlines
than genuinely effective expenditure. Funds which could make an
enormous difference to the eradication of poverty are instead
allocated and not spent in an attempt to appease particular interests.
We would add a further conclusion to be drawn from this situation.
Underspends of this magnitude bring into question the whole approach
of the Community to its development work, suggesting serious inefficiencies
which have to be addressed. In particular Philip Lowe accepted
that there was currently "a deficit at European Union level"
in "coordination and complementarity between EC aid and bilateral
aid from member states".[101]
Clare Short also called for greater coordination with the member
states and other multilateral donors[102]
and Richard Manning criticised the Community's involvement with
"lots and lots of small projects which are quite unmanageable".[103]
It is clearly a mistake for the Community to attempt to duplicate
work done better and more efficiently by others. Philip Lowe admitted
that in current Community programmes "we are much more orientated
to infrastructure and much more orientated to social schemes [where]
arguably some of our member states would be much better and more
innovative in producing results on the ground".[104]
52. Philip Lowe also suggested areas where he thought
the Community enjoyed a comparative advantage, including political
neutrality, a presence in nearly all developing countries, effective
liaison with multilateral institutions in structural adjustment
processes, a competence in trade matters and regional integration.[105]
He told the Committee that the Austrian Presidency had organised
a meeting in October 1998 "which set up an action plan to
see how we could better identify these areas where we could develop
comparative advantages and save our efforts".[106]
Greater coordination and complementarity of development work depends
on such an analysis and we recommend that the Community agree
with donors a statement of their respective `comparative advantages`
in development work. This would not be a legalistic text,
nor mechanically applied, but it could well prove a useful basis
for a more complementary approach. The German Government has indicated
its intention to pursue these issues during its Presidency of
the Council. We welcome this and look forward to progress being
made.
101 Q130 Back
102
QQ231, 288 Back
103
Q21 Back
104
Q131 Back
105
Q131 Back
106
Q131 Back
|
