Examination of Witnesses (Quesitons 20-31)
MR BERNARD
PETIT, MR
RANIERI SABATUCCI
AND MR
ANDRÉ LIEBAERT
23 JANUARY 2007
Q20 Chairman: So one Member State
can leave it to another one to deliver?
Mr Petit: No; the change is really
important. I would like to make sure that everybody understands
that. In the past we had this problem for years because the decisions
are not decisions of the Commission, as you know. Within the Commission
we were focusing on poverty in the least-developed countries only
in the ACP field. Some other people in the Commission thought
that for other regions we were not providing development assistance
but economic co-operation, so they were not bound by all these
political decisions on poverty. Now they are. Because the Consensus
was important to Europe it was also very important within the
Commission to have a common vision within the Commission, to have
the same objective, the same way to allocate resources, focusing
on the least-developed countries and in middle-income countries
focusing on poor people. I always think, when some people think
that for middle-income countries you must not provide development
assistance but the private sector can do the trick, that if we
do that there is a big risk that these middle-income countries
will become low-income countries.
Q21 Chairman: Or it may be, of course,
that if they are middle-income they should be able to address
those problems internally.
Mr Petit: But they have a huge
problem of social cohesion, they have a huge problem of poverty,
so we have also to address this problem in middle-income countries,
the poverty dimension.
Q22 Mr Davies: On this matter is
there not a confusion which you could easily avoid? There is a
complete confusion in the public mind here between two policy
areas which are two quite different policies. We have policies
on all sorts of things in the Commission, policies on agriculture,
policies on God knows what. You have a policy on neighbourhood
countries, a policy on pre-accession countries and a policy on
poverty alleviation in the Third World, but they are three quite
separate policies. Poverty alleviation in the Third World is EuropeAid,
which is Commission funds managed by the Commission, plus the
EDF, which is the Cotonou agreement, Member State fund managed
by the Commission. That all fits together. There should be complete
coherence there and it is all run by your Directorate. You have
contributed to the confusion by producing this Annual Report,
which I have read with colleagues over breakfast, the thing that
has Madame Ferrero-Waldner at the top and Louis Michel at the
bottom[10].
I was quite struck by it, and it is contributing to this confusion.
You should have two quite separate reports. You say, "What
are we doing to help build stability in the near abroad, in the
Western Balkans, in the Ukraine, in the Caucasus for political
reasons so we have stable neighbours?", right? That is one
quite different policy. It is important. We are all happy to pay
our taxes for it. You should report on what you are doing. You
should have another report on what you are doing to relieve third
world poverty. That is my suggestion. What do you think about
it?
Mr Petit: I applaud this suggestion.
If your point is to say that the structure to deliver and develop
assistance within the Commission is not optimal I will agree with
you entirely, because it is the only example in the world where
you have two different departments dealing with development in
different regions, the ACP and Asia/Latin America. This is not
optimal.
Q23 Mr Davies: I cannot tell you
what confusion there is here, particularly in the UK. I am sure
it happens elsewhere as well. It is just crazy. Can I come on
to this co-ordination and alignment? I am so glad with the progress
you are trying to make there. We have seen this sometimes in the
countries we have visited in Africa. Sometimes on the ground it
seems the co-ordination process or alignment is working quite
well and sometimes it is not. I think it works quite well in Mozambique
and Malawi, much less well in Tanzania, for example, just anecdotally,
but it seems to me there ought to be protocols as to how you do
this. As you said yourself, nothing is more crazy than to have
10 different member states plus the Commission having their own
programmes, their own plans, trying to push the countries in a
particular direction and then asking for 10 different monthly
monitoring meetings, which completely screws up and exasperates
everybody and you get nowhere at all. Should there not be on co-ordination
and alignment some global protocol enforced from Brussels so that
it is all agreed between the member states and the Commission
in Brussels how this is done and then it is just done? That is
question number one. Question number two on alignment of policy
is that a great advantage of the Commission is that you have got
trade and aid in the same Commission, the same bureaucracy is
handling it, but you would not think so most of the time, and
it does not seem to me that the aid has been brought into the
discussions over the EPAs[11]
to the extent that it should have been. There should have been
a much more coherent, aligned process. This is perhaps the fault
of Commissioner Mandelson whom we are seeing later on, but just
to get your take on this before we see him, he is now in trouble
because he is not going to achieve his deadline for negotiating
his EPAs. My second question is, if there had been a more coherent,
a more aligned approach by the Commission would it not have been
more easy to achieve those EPAs within the desired timescale?
Mr Petit: Yes, that is a very
important question. On the first question, a protocol for co-ordination,
since 1984 nearly every year we have had conclusions of the Council
on how to strengthen co-ordination within the EU. We have all
the elements and we still are producing papers and decisions of
the Council but the problem is the political willingness to implement
these conclusions. In the past it was not the case; today it is
much more since the European Consensus on Development. A lot of
work is at the moment in progress with the member states in particular
on this concept of co-ordination and complementarity, meaning
division of labour. We have a proposal from the Commission for
the Council in March to have what you call a protocol on the way
to strengthen co-ordination in the field, moving towards division
of labour. Your second question is essential because, as you probably
know but Mr Mandelson will tell you, there was a letter from the
President of the ACP Council at the end of December asking for
an extension of the delay for the negotiation, saying, "We
are not ready". There was in addition a statement by the
ACP Minister of Trade last week or 10 days ago saying, "We
are not ready. You are pushing too far and you are not delivering
on development assistance to help us in EPAs", exactly your
point. Yesterday I had a meeting with one of the ACP negotiators
and he thought that DG-Development and the development aspect
of EPAs were not at all involved in this process, that everything
was in the hands of Mr Mandelson and his services, which is not
the case. The development dimension of EPAs means two things.
It means, of course, resources to help them in the negotiation
but going beyond that to cover the adjustment cost the day they
liberalise.
Mr Davies: That is right.
Mr Petit: But which is not today.
It will be—I do not know—15 years. To help them in
initiating a supply response following deliberalisation process
of the economy, they need to possess the required capacity and
knowledge, to become more competitive, to improve their infrastructures
and we need to support them in all these efforts. All the regional
programmes of the 10th EDF are entirely devoted to supporting
the EPA process, all of them, but the development dimension means
also that in trade we are taking into account the development
situation. What does that mean? That means first opening the market
widely. We must open widely our market. That means deciding on
a very long transition period so they can adapt. That means avoiding
sending to these countries agricultural products of the Union
which are subsidised. We have to discuss all that and the Commission
will have a discussion on that in the following weeks, I think,
because it is time to put on the table what we are really suggesting.
Lastly, on the development aspect, it is not only the Commission
with its own resources which can cover all the needs in terms
of costs of adjustment, in terms of productivity and so on. The
member states must come in. The member states on Aid for Trade
have agreed to reach €1 billion every year on export trade
from 2010. At the moment they are at the level of €300 million.
They have to deliver on that also.
Q24 Joan Ruddock: The criticism that
is sometimes made is that these are EU-driven priorities and Cotonou
was all about dialogue and developing joint ownership of strategies,
and so it seems that perhaps there is an imbalance there in terms
of the pressure that is being put on ACP countries.
Mr Petit: I disagree with that.
I do not like to disagree with you, but—
Joan Ruddock: No, please—I am asking
you a question and want to elicit an answer.
Mr Petit: Okay; my answer is the
following. What was the situation? You had in Lomé, as
you know, this system of preferences for many reasons. We had
to change, so when we were negotiating Cotonou with our partners
we said, "How can we change? What is the best solution in
order, one, to be compatible with WTO[12],
and, two, to give the same or possibly better access for ACP products
in the EU market?", so we decided on EPAs in 2000. We are
now in 2007 and the ACP countries say, seven years after, "You
put too much pressure on us, we have no time, we have been unable
to adapt", and so on. It was not to push the aggressive interests
of Europe but a goal to save the benefits for the ACP. This is
today the situation. If we are negotiating with the US or Japan
we have aggressive interests, but not with the ACP.
Q25 Joan Ruddock: Why do you think they
cannot see that then, if you are so confident that you are right?
Mr Petit: They are not seeing
that. In the discussion I had yesterday with this negotiator it
was exactly on this point. He said to me, "Well, you should
discuss much more with my colleagues because we have the feeling
that you want this aggressive interest and that only trade is
managing that", and probably when development is part and
parcel of this negotiation we are behind trade because they are
in the lead, but when you discuss with these people only in development
terms they understand a bit what we are doing. In particular the
purpose is not to have a free trade area. The purpose is to help
these countries build their regional markets because it is there
that they can develop, and then the relationship with the EU,
because we need to be compatible with WTO, but a lot of questions
are still on the table. Market access is one. It is very important.
Q26 Ann McKechin: I think there is
some concern about the potential decrease in funding on education
and health in the 10th EDF and your policy is that you are going
to give this money instead to general budget support. To what
extent is this going to translate to adequate spending in these
two key areas of development?
Mr Petit: There are several elements
in that. It is a concern if you look only statistically in the
draft country strategy paper for the 10th EDF that resource for
health and education is seen to have decreased. I have expressed
myself this concern. The answer to that situation is two-fold.
The first answer is that we are working in terms of complementarity.
The Commission cannot do everything everywhere. You have the member
states, so if education is adequately covered by others in a given
country there is no point in the Commission adding resources to
that, but, secondly, we have this budgetary support focus on health
and education. It is not enough. This is the reason why in the
Commission we are working on this concept of MDG contracts precisely
to cover much more adequately at our level health and education,
but this is a concern. There was a question on trade which, I
am sorry, I have not answered previously, on coherence. The Consensus
put a huge emphasis on coherence. Things are not going to change
overnight but we are working a lot and there will be a report
this year on coherence for which we have sent a questionnaire
to all the member states, "How are you dealing in your country
with coherence? What are the instruments you have to deal with
coherence?" They will answer that and we will issue a report
which is a kind of political peer pressure on some member states
who do not care at all, and I have some in mind.
Q27 James Duddridge: What has been
the impact of the Strategy for Africa, and specifically what has
the EU been doing to ensure that the African Union and African
countries develop their capacity rather than the Strategy being
more about the EU projecting its own priorities?
Mr Petit: The impact has been
huge, not only because we have now an EU Africa Strategy but because
we believe in the African Union, which is so different from the
Organisation of African Unity in the past, if you remember. We
are developing a huge programme with the African Union. We have
put in a lot of resources, for the moment €55 million, and
I do not mention the peace facility, for instance, and we are
providing resources. I am not mentioning governance, which is
the peer review mechanism also within the African Union and NEPAD[13],
which is very important. We have developed the dialogue with them
a lot and for the first time in history the Commission went for
a meeting in Addis Ababa with the Commission of the African Union.
This is important. Why? Because up to now dealing with Africa
was something for development people, DG Development, who are
in discussions with Africa. The President of the Commission and
eight Commissioners went there. Eight Commissioners, including
Mr Mandelson, went there to discuss it with their colleagues.
That means that now we are thinking in terms of development policy;
we are not thinking in terms of DG Development but in terms of
all the Commission services and this is part and parcel of the
coherence aspect because coherence is not only to check if the
internal policies are not undermining development policy; it is
also to find positive synergies between the other internal policies
and development policy because we have a lot to learn from the
other policies—from research, from education, from migration
and so on. The impact has been huge.
Q28 Chairman: I do not know whether you
are able to help. We are doing a water and sanitation inquiry
and we have taken evidence from the Commission, but one of the
problems that has been thrown up in this basically is that in
spite of the increasing commitments to help deliver the MDGs on
water and sanitation all the international agencies seem to be
reducing their technical capacity to do it. Is that the case with
the Commission?
Mr Petit: I have my specialist
on water and sanitation, Mr Liebaert, who, if you do not mind,
will answer your question.
Q29 Chairman: Basically, can we look
to the EU to help or not?
Mr Liebaert: The situation is
that water and sanitation is not prioritised by as many countries
as we would expect, even as a result of the EU Water Initiative,
which was a very strong political statement in 2002. We still
do not see water and sanitation being sufficiently prioritised
as a demand by the countries, so that calls for reviving this
political process and targeting the countries where it is still
weak.
Q30 Chairman: But that really means
that you are expecting the member states to raise their game?
Mr Liebaert: This is a matter
of political will. The Commission by establishing a water facility
and resourcing it with half a billion euros has made an effort.
In terms of our technical capacity, we are not under dimension,
but we need to reduce or increase our capacity response by relating
it to the demand. We aim at possessing this capacity in the area
of water and sanitation whenever there is a demand. What we can
see, and I think this is the most important part, is that in the
countries where water was an important subject it has been reinforced.
In countries where it was weak it is still weak and it is still
absent, so I think there needs to be proactive action on these
countries to push and maybe include water and sanitation in the
MDG contract.
Q31 Chairman: That is a helpful comment
towards our report. Can I thank you once again for your engagement
with us. We value it very much, and I am quite sure that there
will be a time that DFID and the European Commission will have
more common ground and we will have more reason perhaps to exchange
views more often, but I appreciate the fact that we have been
able to do it once again and I look forward to the next occasion
when we can meet yourself and perhaps Mr Michel next time too.
Thank you very much.
Mr Petit: Thank you very much
and we are looking forward to seeing you next year.
10 European Commission, Annual Report 2006 on theEuropean
Community's Development Policy and the Implementation of External
Assistance in 2005 http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/reports/europeaid_annual_report_2006_full_version_en.pdf Back
11
Economic Partnership Agreements. Back
12
World Trade Organization. Back
13
The New Partnership for Africa's Development. Back
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