EU: The European Commission yesterday published an action plan designed to improve the way that EU states deliver development aid to countries in need.
The plan sets a goal of harmonising member states' development aid programmes and delivering more joint EU projects in developing regions across the world.
The strategy, which was launched by development commissioner Louis Michel, concludes that the current system of dispersing development aid in the EU is unnecessarily fragmented and is not providing the best service to partners in need.
"The excessive fragmentation of development assistance has led to dispersion, duplication and even contradiction in aid activities, reducing its potential impact through accumulation of unnecessary administrative costs and increased burden put on partner countries," says the strategy.
However, the plan received a lukewarm response from several EU states, including Ireland, which fear the EU is extending its powers in an area of national responsibility.
Irish officials are concerned the commission wants to extend its remit in the field of development aid, which is traditionally considered an important arm of its foreign policy. Britain and Denmark are also concerned about the impact of the plan.
"We think that there are enough existing avenues for distributing development aid so we would need to see what additional benefit this plan would have," said one British official yesterday.
At the launch of the strategy, Mr Michel said the commission had no intention of encroaching on member states' competences in the field of development aid.
"This is not about flying the European flag further afield; rather it is dealing with a lack of co-ordination that exists," he said. "With these proposals, we can deliver on our promises: to do more for development and to do it better and faster The EU is the world's biggest aid donor but every single euro we spend will contribute more to the fight against poverty if we share this huge task in an intelligent and co-ordinated way."
The plan proposes establishing a joint EU framework for the administration of some development projects in an effort to cut down programme costs and developing a new strategic approach to co-financing using both commission and member-state funds.
It also proposes facilitating "passive" commission financing, whereby national funds from member states could be administratively channelled through the commission and lead to co-financing operations in states in need of development aid.
EU states currently spend about €42 billion on development aid every year, while the commission spends more than €8 billion on development aid annually. But under an agreement signed by all EU member states last year, each state will have to increase the proportion of their budget spent on aid to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015, generating billions of euro in funds.
The new strategy proposes delivering the reforms within four years.