Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-188)
MR JOHANNES
LUCHNER
20 JUNE 2006
Q180 Ann McKechin: What policy areas,
yes?
Mr Luchner: I will give you one
example for which it is too large, which is money. We are faced
with calls to finance programmes, we are faced with calls to finance
the CERF and we have a constant budget. I think many people forget
that Member States are for the moment in a situation where they
have committed themselves to an increase in ODA and therefore
have increasing budgets with which they can finance new things,
whereas for the Commission it is a zero sum game. If Louis Michel
decides to give €20 million to the CERF, he will take it
from the European NGOs, he has to take it from somewhere because
the budget has not increased. That would have been an issue where
one could have maybe tried to coordinate a little bit earlier
on and also to ask question: "Okay, your ODA budgets have
gone up but what is your commitment in terms of the European Union,
the European Commission budget?" I think in terms of sectoral
policies, there is no European approach. Do we charge in health
clinics? Do we then talk to governments? Niger is an example.
Ninety-five per cent of the victims you see in refugee camps are
women and children. It is a European policy point. How do you
address that? You come down to very technical issues maybe but
they are of crucial importance to the beneficiaries. I think now
we need certainty and we need to find a way of how we relate in
terms of civil protection and humanitarian aid. I think the LRRD[2]
debate is a good example of a debate where everybody has agreed
but why are the results not coming. I think there we could work
more concretely. I think basically compared to development co-operation
the whole area is open to more policy coordination.
Q181 Ann McKechin: If the budgets of
the EU nations are increasing for ODA over the next five years,
as they have indicated last year in the obligation, but they are
not increasing in real terms the ECHO budget, does that mean that
we will end up with more emphasis on the bilateral donors than
the multilateral approach which ECHO has offered?
Mr Luchner: Financially by default,
I hope policy-wise not. I hope that the Commission can play the
role it is supposed to play.
Ann McKechin: So there will be a greater
need for coordination than there ever has been?
Q182 Chairman: Why is Louis Michel
not touring the European capitals lobbying for his share of this?
Mr Luchner: Because he is touring
African capitals as Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner.
I have to say DG ECHO has limited capacity and we have to build
that up slowly, but there are a large number of areas where there
is a basic consensus emerging, particularly the Good Humanitarian
Donorship Initiative which to me represents the core of what we
should be doing and what we should be committed to.
Q183 John Barrett: If I could turn
to disaster preparedness. You mentioned earlier that 20 to 30%
of your budget goes on disasters. Hilary Benn here has pledged
that DFID will allocate 10% of the money it spends on humanitarian
to work on disaster preparedness. Has ECHO any plans to follow
the lead taken by DFID and allocate a specific proportion of its
budget to disaster preparedness?
Mr Luchner: On the figures I think
I might have expressed myself badly. Ten to 20% of the operational
budget is spent on natural disasters as opposed to complex emergencies.
We have a fixed budget for disaster preparedness which is set
by our budgetary authority, ie the Member States and the Council
and the European Parliament. Last time we made a proposal and
the Member States cut it down and the Parliament increased it,
so we are not independent in that to that extent if it is a DIPECHO[3]
programme, which is about 3% of the entire budget and this year
we are 19 million, where we finance mostly small-scale, local,
community-based disaster preparedness actions that we want to
keep. We are making an effort inside the house to streamline disaster
preparedness wherever possible into other programmes. We have
come to the conclusion that it is not a good idea to do that in
what we call emergency decisions, that is relatively small decisions
up to €3 million which is the immediate response to a crisis,
normally a natural disaster, but in the longer term six to 18
months decision we will more and more integrate that aspect of
disaster preparedness because it is good humanitarian policy and
good economic policy, if you will, it is a good way to spend the
money. We are now looking (which would be a pilot project) at
a gap filler at a macro level between humanitarian aid and development
aid. There is an upcoming decision on the drought in the greater
Horn of Africa which would be a large decision, I think up to
10 million, entirely focused on managing the drought cycle and
on preparedness. I say it is a gap filler because there also we
have talked to our national officers in the various countries
and to our desk officers in Brussels to see what they can do and
how they can take over through national governments. So, yes,
we want to do a lot. We asked for a budget. I would guess we would
stay at at least three to 4% of our budget specifically on DIPECHO
programmes. We will continue with mainstreaming and we will have
hopefully, if our Member States and the Parliament agree, decisions
like on the greater Horn of Africa, specific situations, to invest
more in disaster preparedness.
Q184 Chairman: Just on that point, I
was trying to find it in the notes that we had but I think there
was a comparison that said if you took the Pakistan earthquake
and an earthquake in California that had the same Richter scale
measurement and the same basic population base; in one case the
casualties amounted to two deaths and in Pakistan it was 79,000,
which is an indication of being prepared and the soundness of
investing in that. You obviously express the constraints that
you are under, but there is a reality, is there not, that poor
countries are much more susceptible to disaster because structures
are not strong enough and they are not reinforced? That was true
of the Pakistan earthquake. Then when you go in afterwards to
ensure you rebuild to a standard that takes account of the susceptibilities
of a disaster, how much of that kind of evaluation and commitment
is carried on within ECHO?
Mr Luchner: Evaluation of?
Q185 Chairman: Of vulnerability and
indeed whether or not money should go in in advance of disasters
in areas which are susceptible and then after a disaster ensuring
that the reconstruction is a reconstruction that does not make
them vulnerable to the same disaster again?
Mr Luchner: That goes on on an
on-going basis, at any rate in terms of vulnerability at all levels,
both at country level and at—
Q186 Chairman: The concern one has
is that given you have said the constraints you have on your budget,
and our own Department's argument is to put some money into preparing
people against it, you do not really have the ability to do that
if your budget is static. Is that a specific issue where you could
do more?
Mr Luchner: Yes, absolutely. The
Commission has an emergency reserve of €220 million. We have
gone to that reserve four times in the last five years and we
will go back to it now for Darfur and the Palestinian Occupied
Territories. We never have enough money on average so, yes, we
could do that. For DIPECHO and for disaster preparedness it is
a specific budget line that needs to be voted and therefore whether
it is increased or decreased depends entirely on the Council and
European Parliament. Yes, you could spend far more money certainly.
Q187 Chairman: It is a kind of difference
between emergency relief/disaster response and development and
what you are really saying is if you provide the right development
money you reduce the number of disasters?
Mr Luchner: Absolutely, that is
why I mentioned it earlier that Commissioner Michel has given
written instructions to the development services to mainstream
the risk reduction and preparedness aspects in the development
programmes because that is where the big money is. We at DG ECHO
will continue to focus at the grass-roots and smaller project
level in what we do and not do very large decisions, with the
exception I just mentioned of the greater Horn of Africa.
Q188 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed for answering our questions. If you could give us a note
on the Panzi Hospital, that would reassure those of us who visited
and those who heard about it as well that it is not quite as bad
as we feared. Thank you very much.
Mr Luchner: Yes, thank you.
2 Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development. Back
3
ECHO's disaster preparedness programme. Back
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