Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
MR JOHANNES
LUCHNER
20 JUNE 2006
Q160 John Battle: Precisely.
Mr Luchner: DG ECHO is the only
Commission service that is left that is responsible for the entire
project cycle from conception to evaluation. I think the system
works well and probably better than it used to before because
while you have the split in Brussels, the vast majority of the
aid has been deconcentrated to delegations, so the decisions are
actually taken in delegations, the programmes are written in delegations
on the ground who look to DG Development for policy advice and
who look to DG AIDCO for the implementation. The second advantage
that we have for the moment than we had in the last Commission
is that you have one Commissioner responsible for both development
policy and humanitarian aid. What Louis Michel, for instance,
has done using this position is to give instructions to all his
services that disaster reduction and prevention needs to become
a mainstay also of longer term development aid programmes, so
you have the advantage of one Commissioner seeing both sides of
the problem. The other advantage, of course, that you have is
that it is easier for us now when you have one Commissioner responsible
for both services to try and translate into practice linking relief
and development, which in theory is relatively difficult but is
much easier in practice if you have one single political guidance,
if you will, but there is no doubt that the structure of the Commission
is relatively complex.
Q161 John Battle: You have given
me why there are no problems but are there no problems? Have any
emerged at all as a result of the fracture?
Mr Luchner: Quite honestly for
me it is maybe less apparent because I started out in development
and I have good contacts there. This is not industrial policy
or administrative reform. People work towards generally a common
goal and you have in the development and humanitarian aid business
people with a certain idealism or moral conviction and who work
for the beneficiaries, so while you have, as in any bureaucracy
with two different departments, certain quarrels, the objective
remains the same. Where it is sometimes difficult is the delineation.
For instance, we now in DG ECHO will get the food aid emergency
budget and food security will stay in DG Development. Then you
have discussions but even those discussions are very useful to
clarify things and to see how we can move on conceptually as well.
Q162 John Battle: If I may just push
it a stage further. We separated out our DFID from the Foreign
Office, and I might be an extreme idealist because I am tempted
to say that I would have DFID running the Foreign Office instead
of the other way round and that DFID should be the centre of the
world and not the Foreign Office. I say that because foreign affairs
that can be expedient (and I do not use that word pejoratively)
short-term, trying to respond to immediate crises can actually
undermine the longer term development decisions. Does that happen?
Mr Luchner: Do you have any concrete
examples in mind?
Q163 John Battle: No, I am asking
you whether you have any.
Mr Luchner: No, I cannot think
of a specific country or a specific place. Of course, for the
Commission it is quite different as the foreign policy competence
is one that is shared and that is very heavily centred on the
Council, much more so than humanitarian aid.
Q164 Chairman: I suppose there was
a small point when some of us were in the Democratic Republic
of Congo which was the issue of retraining the Army for the post-conflict
situation and the difficulty of getting experienced officers seconded
from European armies to help with this process—in a sense
what is behind John Battle's question—because it was not
high up the foreign policy agenda. It was high up the international
development agenda but not the foreign policy agenda. So you could
argue it was a shortcoming, it was not a conflict because it was
not up the foreign policy agenda. While on the Democratic Republic
of Congo, I do not know whether you can answer this question but
we visited Panzi Hospital in Bakuvu and it was an absolutely fantastic
hospital with the facilities and the dedication of the staff,
but a very, very big part of their problem was with women who
are suffering the consequences of rape requiring major medical
support. ECHO was very much appreciated as a supporter of that
hospital but on the basis the conflict was supposedly over—although
the evidence we got would suggest it is not quite over—the
money was to be withdrawn or terminated at the end of July, I
think it was, or certainly within a very short space of time,
and there was a deep concern as to what was going to happen. I
think there are two issues that arise there. I do not think we
accept that the conflict is over and, even if the conflict was
over, humanitarian requirements certainly are not over. Is that
a lack of coordination? I suppose what we would like to know is
will the money continue even if it is coming out of another head?
Mr Luchner: I think it is something
that you will find in most countries where DG ECHO works because
we have a policy of trying to have, at least where it is possible,
an entry and an exit strategy. We do not want to do development
work that is better done by others with other means, with different
kinds of financing and other means of working. So we always have
to have that question in mind. In this particular case in DRC,
in some areas you have a fluid situation and we would like in
specific areas of course development money to come in, which will
take a while. In this specific case, I think it is a slight misunderstanding
in the sense that what we have told them is that in the long run
(and for us the long run can be relatively short, I admit) that
you will need to look for other sources of financing. We also
have, I admit, a bit of a forgotten crisis mentality and we have
seen in this particular case, for instance, as you say, there
is a lot of donor attention, there are a lot of other agencies
that are quite happy and quite willing to work there, and therefore
what we have told them is we provide emergency funds and when
the emergency is more or less over (and there you have to define
when it is over) DG ECHO will have to withdraw. To answer your
last question, no, we are preparing a contract extension for another
six months for another €300,000, which should not detract
from the principle that we need to exit when we know that development
can come in. We necessarily need to do it in a responsible and
coordinated manner but we need to remain humanitarian and we need
to concentrate on emergency situations.
Q165 Joan Ruddock: Do you not see
in any sense it as your responsibility to suggest where the money
might come from and a smooth transition can occur?
Mr Luchner: Of course and that
we will do.
Q166 Joan Ruddock: You will do that?
It sounded rather as though you were saying to the hospital, "You
go out there with all you have got to do and get on and find yourself
some money."
Mr Luchner: The first place to
look is our own delegation in Kinshasa and we do that both in
Brussels and at country level and via the donors. That is clear.
We are not going to say, "There is no more contract, the
ECHO emergency is done, and you deal with the situation."
Q167 Chairman: I suppose the point
that was being made to us was that there was a difference of view
certainly between DFID and other donors about, first of all, the
extent to which the conflict had finished but, even if the conflict
was deemed to have finished, the humanitarian requirements being
immediately stopped. There was a feeling that there was a longer
period of fairly urgent humanitarian response before you got into
the development phase. That was a clear difference of view that
was expressed to us about DFID's approach compared with other
donors, with which they included the European Commission?
Mr Luchner: We have to make the
assessment on an on-going basis. The longest financing decision
duration is 18 months and these decisions are only for places
where you are pretty sure that it is not going to be over in a
year, say DRC, say Sudan and Darfur, and therefore we have to
evaluate and re-evaluate the situation on a constant basis.
Q168 Richard Burden: Just staying
briefly with the Panzi Hospital issue, I suppose it follows up
a little bit Joan's question whether you in terms of the Commission
or any offshoots thereof have a responsibility to make sure that
there are other mechanisms in place and it was not just your exit
strategy. How would that happen in the specific case of DRC because
another of the messages we got when we were over there was there
was a real problem of anybody seeing it as their responsibility
to pull other people together. Individual delegations, individual
offices, individual NGOs all recognised the need to make sure
that their activities were working in concert, but they are were
all expressing frustrations that nobody actually pulled it altogether.
Mr Luchner: Including the UN?
Q169 Richard Burden: Including the
UN and also including the Commission, so how would that actually
happen in relation to Panzi Hospital?
Mr Luchner: I am Brussels-based
and I had the impression that there was quite a strong coordination
effort, at least coming from Ross Mountain, the Humanitarian Coordinator.
In terms of the handover, it would happen, as I said, as far as
the European Commission is concerned both at country and at headquarters
level because what you make sure is that you have coverage of
the instruments. We have special rules, for instance we do not
have to go out to tender for projects, we are more flexible, we
can decide faster and also leave more easily, so you have to make
sure that you have an overlapping of the financing instruments.
Normally in an ideal situation obviously, when you say you are
back into a development co-operation situation you have coordination
by the government.
Q170 Richard Burden: Which government?
Mr Luchner: The national government
in a country and then at various government levels.
Q171 Chairman: Not in the DRC?
Mr Luchner: No. Normally that
is where the coordination comes from and then you have various
mechanisms, developmental co-operation, less the UN but mostly
the World Bank and the IMF where you have, although it is no longer
called structural adjustment funds, something like that. For us,
as we said, we would look at in particular the Commission itself
in the first place, the UN and then other donors and other Member
States in the area, but it is clear that in the long run their
health care system, of which the centre is a part, will need to
be taken over by the government. I am talking about a process
that, for instance, in Angola can take years. It is not a process
that is symmetric and covers the entire country but you can move
out of humanitarian assistance in some areas and development people
can come in while you have to stay in other areas. We moved back
in for a specific Marburg fever crisis, I think it was, just one
or two years ago just functionally because it was urgent, because
development money could not be mobilised very fast and so on.
We do not look at it as a very clean, nice, one-way street process
but it is a process that needs to take place.
Q172 Richard Burden: I understand
that circumstances will be different from country to country and
situation to situation, but just as an example of that one, in
the DRC, if I follow what you are saying correctly, your delegation
out there in DRC should now be saying, "Okay, we have made
this extra money available in the short-term bridging. It is our
responsibility to make sure that longer term funding is in place
and, if it is not in place, to work out who we should be talking
to to alert them to that to make sure something happens, and you
should be doing those reports at the level of delegation in DRC
so that something can happen at Brussels level if necessary.
Mr Luchner: DG ECHO has a network
of experts who are regional and country based to follow and monitor
projects. Normally what would happen is that these experts are
in consultation with the EU delegation which deals with development
aspects and we do the same thing at Brussels level, to organise,
if you will, a handover of humanitarian aid to development aid.
Q173 Richard Burden: Might it be
possible to drop us a note[1]
on how far that has advanced, just as an example?
Mr Luchner: Yes, sure.
Q174 Richard Burden: That would be
useful. Just on a different subject which is about DG Environment
because whilst their mandate is to undertake civil protection—and
it is in relation to civil protection I am talking—inside
the EU, there is an expansion of its interests in work outside
the EU. In many ways that is a positive thing but I just wonder
what perspectives you have on any issues regarding the coordination
or synergies of their work and your work?
Mr Luchner: I would say that would
be one point where I would disagree with Mr Stockton who spoke
before me. I think for us coordination is a key even if it is
expensive. You can try to make it cheaper but it is definitely
worth the money. I start with that because it is a relatively
complex issue. Since humanitarian aid in the EU Commission is
communitarian, that is we take a decision, we go to the Member
States and the Member States agree or disagree by qualified majority
and then the Parliament has a right to scrutiny. That is a Community
process. What the so-called Monitoring and Information Centre
(MIC) of DG Environment does, and has done also for crises outside
the European Union, is to relay information, so, for instance,
if you have an earthquake somewhere, a report comes in, MIC sends
that on to Member States to specific contact points and asks them
whether they can help, and the Member States will send that information
back to the MIC, and it is a mechanism basically to centralise
and pass on information. I think in general as humanitarians we
have to welcome anybody who wants to do humanitarian work, be
it civil protection or military, but I will not hide from you
that recently we have spent a lot of time on that specific subject
because you then have, if you will, a new clientele and we have
done it, I think, quite successfully with the military staff in
explaining the business, in explaining that there are MCDA guidelines,
there are also differences in interventions, what is the line
of command in humanitarian operations, what is the humanitarian
space, et cetera, et cetera. You then have the report by
Mr Barnier who looked critically at this coordination issue. You
have other evaluation reports which are quite critical. And of
course you have Jan Egeland who has also been relatively reserved
as far as coordination is concerned. I think what we need to do
is to work together and make sure we have good divisions of labour
and good understanding. The key point in understanding of where
it all starts is are we working on the basis of need and therefore
demand or on the basis of supply? Are we working on the basis
we already have 12 field hospitals, we do not need any more; we
need blankets, we need food, we need other things? Or do we work
on the basis but all we have is another eight field hospitals
and now they will go? That has been our worry. We need to make
sure that we do not only ask our Member States what they can supply
but we also need to tell them what exactly it is that we need.
Very often that information comes from governments and we work,
as I said, through a network of experts who give us needs assessments
and who are concrete there. I think there are very clearly among
our Member States two different traditions/tendencies. One I would
call the multilateral one, which asks for permission to contribute
to the CERF, DFID certainly among them. Others are more in a civil
protection tradition and would like to use humanitarian aid and
humanitarian aid financing also for civil protection means. We
now have to bring the two together. One of the issues where we
have been very, very strong, and I think that is more or less
accepted, is the central coordination role of the host government
and OCHA because with all the criticism you might hear about OCHA,
some of it certainly justified, what we do not need is a third
coordinator, a European Union coordinator who acts independently
of OCHA and of the government. That is certainly not what we want.
We are working on that. The civil protection people are working
on that. They organised a seminar with UN OCHA to move further
but you have to stay aware that civil protection is a Member State's
competence. The legal changes that are now on the table of the
Council happened on the basis of Article 308. I will not bore
you with that but it basically means unanimity because you are
talking about something that was not foreseen in the treaties.
In the end Member States will remain free to act as they wish
whereas the Commission is not free to act as it wishes, it has
to work based on a regulation adopted by our Member States and
our Parliament and based on financing decisions scrutinised by
our Member States and agreed by our Parliament. Those two different
approaches will remain there. A final word, if I may. It is a
bit difficult for me to be much clearer because the debate is
moving on very, very quickly and is not finished and the legislative
discussion is not finished but we are post tsunami in a very,
very fluid state in Europe as to who should do what and how we
should do it. We simply have to live with the fact that there
are now military forces that use humanitarian aid as an advertisement
for recruitment drives. That is a reality that we have to live
with and we have to make sure that we protect the humanitarian
space through explanation; that is how we see it, sometimes through
opposition but mostly through explanation. Another issue, of course,
is when you hear some people say that civil protection is a panacea.
I think it is about 20 to 30% of our budget that goes to natural
disasters and that is normally where they focus. I think a serious
question needs to be asked whether you want civil protection forces
in any kind of area in what you could call a "complex"
emergency and whether you want European uniforms that are not
military but they are uniforms in those kinds of situations and
whether you want military aeroplanes in those kinds of situation.
I do not want to go into details but we have had experiences of
military aeroplanes not getting landing rights, for instance,
and time lost in our business is lives lost. Therefore my emphasis
again is on good coordination at all levels, in Brussels and also
in the field by OCHA.
Q175 Richard Burden: I know it is
a bit difficult to predict when the results of discussions are
not complete, but you are saying there are discussions to try
to work these things through going on at the moment. Do you have
any sense about when they will be completed?
Mr Luchner: The legislative proposal
that is now on the table which would allow the MIC to operate
outside the European Union and to get financing for transport
and logistics is now on the table of the Council. Some Member
States were very unhappy that this was in a foreign relations
instrument. I do not know what the motivation was for that is.
It is now being put back into the domestic European instrument,
the rapid reaction and preparedness instrument, which is for civil
protection in Europe (that was the intention of the Commission
when we made the proposal). We now have to stick in these external
aspects there. The debate should be finished under the Finnish
Presidency, at least that is the ambition, but since they have
to work on the basis of unanimity I do not think we can be very
sure. Concerning the report by Mr Barnier, the Commission is in
the process of developing a position on that, but I think the
basic legislative debate should be finished by the end of this
year or early next year. The debate will never be finished as
long as there are natural catastrophes because we do an evaluation
after every single one. We now have Java and we evaluate also
in order to improve the information exchange between the MIC and
coordination on the ground as we go along from crisis to crisis
to learn as rapidly as possible from our mistakes.
Q176 Joan Ruddock: Obviously you
have begun to touch on some of the things that I was going to
raise with you. You said that you welcome anyone who wants to
do the work, including the military. I have often thought myself
I can see how the military, in fact, may be necessary in an immediate
humanitarian operation particularly because of logistics and planes
and helicopters and heavy lifting equipment, all that kind of
thing. As you know, however, it is a very controversial area.
We have had examples in particular in Afghanistan where it is
more development than emergencies about the mix of military and
civilian. VOICE, which is the Voluntary Organisations in Co-operation
in Emergencies, which has 90 members, so that might be half the
European NGOs that you actually deal with, have said this: "For
the last decade EU humanitarian aid has been carried out by European
NGOs and international organisations supported by ECHO according
to a needs-based mandate and the principles of independence, neutrality
and impartiality." I really want to explore just a bit further
with you how do you respond to those concerns and the fact that
they believe that developments in the Common Foreign and Security
Policy and the European Security and Defence Policy have had implications
for the impartiality and neutrality of European humanitarian aid.
Do you agree with them? If you do not, can you demonstrate why?
Mr Luchner: I think we are not
there yet. I have not had one incident, I have not seen one programming
year where we were under any kind of political pressure, for instance,
to change our needs assessment or to disregard our needs assessment
at a global level. We have had no change in the principle that
we do the needs assessment and 70% of our funds are pre-programmed
to make sure we have the coverage. I think what we have seen post
tsunami is the politicisation, if you will, of the whole area—civil
protection, humanitarian aid, the involvement of the military.
To my own staff who are reticent about it I always say that we
have two choices, either the military hugs us or we give them
a hug. I prefer the second one so we go and we talk to them. One
of the big political problems for us is that the tsunami is atypical,
it is not really what our mainstream business is about, nor is
Pakistan to a lesser extent, but that is where the logistics capacity
obviously of the military comes in handy. I mention the OCHA guidelines.
We are very clear with them. You should be used as a last resort
in very, very specific circumstances, which are atypical in terms
of the crises we deal with and certainly not in complex emergencies,
only as a last resort as I said, for humanitarian aid. We are
very, very shocked about the experience that you mentioned in
Afghanistan. I think it was easy for humanitarians before the
tsunami, at least in the Commission because we said we are needs-based
and therefore our programme is apolitical, but I think we have
come to the conviction, particularly with Louis Michel, that if
you want to defend that humanitarian space and those principles
of neutrality and independence and so on, you have to defend it
with political means, particularly at headquarters level in Europe.
That includes convincing people, that includes coming here, and
that includes going on to the European Parliament and not only
saying we do a great job and we have a great product (because
that is very easy in humanitarian aid) but also to explain actively
and defend that humanitarian space, and that is what we are doing.
One of the key partners in my view is VOICE as are the NGOs. One
of the criticisms you mentioned for me coming from DGVIII was
we had a very conflictual relationship with some NGOs, and it
was an eye opener that the agenda and objectives are very much
the same now in humanitarian aid. I have not seen as far as the
Commission is concerned a single incident where there would have
been an encroachment in that conceptual humanitarian space in
terms of neutrality and independence; quite the contrary. I think
you have to ask yourself why, and I think it is legitimate to
speak almost cynically: although the products that we have and
the excellence we have and I think we have a good reputation,
our budget is staying the same. My personal explanation for that
is exactly that; we have become a bit too apolitical to do a very,
very good job certainly, but not to communicate too much about
it for fear we may attract others to that humanitarian space.
Q177 Joan Ruddock: In the previous
session we talked a lot about the recipients and finding out what
they thought. I wonder on this very central point about the relationship,
for example, between the military and aid organisations in a disaster,
whether any of your evaluations have taken account of what the
people on the ground felt about that mix?
Mr Luchner: About the military?
No, I do not think so. Formal evaluations, no. The experts on
the ground, and I myself was recently in Darfur in an area where
the African Union was stationed, put it that way, and of course
people tell you and of course you get day-to-day feedback and
either you get it directly from the people or you get it via your
partners, in that case it is the ICRC. Maybe just to go on, we
went with the ICRC people into government-dominated and rebel-held
areas, which brought up again the whole issue of visibility of
the European Union and exactly those kind of questions, so conceptually
we are certainly on the ball and following that very closely.
We have not had an evaluation yet, I am not aware of one, where,
for instance, you would have European peacekeeping troops and
humanitarian aid operations running in parallel and how you would
manage that.
Q178 Ann McKechin: We have had a
very interesting discussion today about the value of coordination
but there must be some disappointment that a recent study found
that present EU donors do not necessarily coordinate any better
with each other than non-EU donors. Do you see that there is some
role for ECHO in facilitating more coordination in terms of the
humanitarian response amongst EU Members? Obviously you have spoken
earlier about the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative. How
are discussions proceeding about the need for better coordination?
Mr Luchner: Yes, I think we should
absolutely have a role in that, if only because we have a world
presence which most Member States do not have, and if only because
our regulation gives us that coordination role and the treaties
do as well. The reality, however, is that it is of course up to
Member States how far they want to go. I do not want to be too
apologetic because I am certainly one of those inside ECHO who
says that we need to do more of that, particularly also in policy
terms, whether there is a European consensus or is it not there
between various factions. On the ground yes, but on the ground
of course the approach differs. One approach would be, for instance,
to use EC delegations for coordination. Mr Barnier has suggested
that to some extent in his report. Another approach is to use
the Presidencies and therefore to be more Member States-focused.
I think personally this debate should be approached rather functionally
to see what system do we need that can deliver the results because
we have very, very small Member States who are not present on
the ground and if you use the presidencies you have to rely on
other Members States to maintain that experience. I think the
Commission should play a greater role in coordination.
Q179 Ann McKechin: What sort of policy
areas do you think would be the priority for coordination?
Mr Luchner: Policy areas?
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