Key questions ¦ Background ¦ Recommendations ¦ Post your comments
Key questions
The current state of the debate underscores the need to understand the implications of existing EC development policy, before defining what the next generation of structures (e.g. budget and institutions) should be. The following questions deserve special attention:
- How can the EC further improve internal institutional consistency in its development cooperation? Do DG Development’s role and weight in policy making, implementation and monitoring need to be clarified? Comment
- How can Member States maintain their monitoring function, while ensuring more effective decision making over EC aid programmes? Comment
- What is the impact of the speed and predictability of disbursement on recipients? Comment
- What type of staff is required for which roles in order to increase aid effectiveness? Comment
- What are the effects of different aid modalities on performance? For example, when is a project approach more useful than a sector wide approach or budget support? Comment
What is your opinion on these key questions? Do you have additional suggestions? Share your views.
Background
Do the EC’s aid architecture and management support its strengths and development objectives, or do they hamper them instead? The EC’s growing capacities to speed up aid delivery, develop new policy thinking and engage in donor debates are widely recognised. Nevertheless, policy concerns remain. They include the institutional architecture of the EU in dealing with external relations, financial regulations and procedures, aid modalities and issues related to the EC’s staff.There is also a perceived need to improve the systematic integration of cross-cutting, horizontal issues in aid implementation. Gender and the environment are two of the most regularly cited issues.
Institutional architecture
The consistency of the European Commission’s external relations is often questioned: responsibilities are spread over several DGs (DEV, ECHO, EuropeAid and RELEX), and the rationale for working with different, at times overlapping regional groupings (through e.g. CPA, ENPI and the Barcelona Process) is not always clear. The resulting complexity and incoherence are echoed in the field, where the EC’s interlocutors sometimes have the impression of hearing a different ‘voice’ than the one from headquarters.Concerning the inter-institutional distribution of power within the EU, a recurring issue is how to minimise the risk of micro-management by the Council and Parliament, without losing their necessary control function. The core challenge remains one of how the Commission can best use result-oriented management, so that Council and Parliament can focus more on monitoring impact.
Financial regulations and procedures
Several reform measures have increased the efficiency of the delivery process of EC aid in recent years. These include the reduction from 35 to 10 financial instruments, the deconcentration process and the creation of EuropeAid in 2001. Nevertheless, many of those interviewed for this project criticised continued efficiency problems, most notably concerning the complexity of financial regulations, the speed of disbursement, and the difficulties faced by non-EU tenders. Several interviewees felt that current procedures are designed more with the negative objective of preventing mismanagement, than as tools to increase positive impact.
Further ‘deconcentration’ or devolution of responsibilities to the field is often seen as the most effective way to address this problem, provided this is accompanied by adequate staff policy (see below) and a shared understanding of the limits of the EC’s role.
Aid modalities and allocation mechanisms
The EC’s increasing use of General Budget Support (GBS) is seen by many as a way to enhance political dialogue and public finance management, while supporting ownership and encouraging majorinvestment. However, there are also concerns that GBS risks being used as a lever to exert political or ideological influence over partner governments, when linked to ‘good governance’ demands. Moreover, GBS could lead to new conditionalities, if the EC uses it only in those countries that fulfil conditions formulated by the IMF.
New ‘MDG contracts’, with their emphasis on long-term commitments, may provide more stability and discourage a ’stop and go’ logic in the disbursement of EC budget aid tranches.
Finally, vertical funds or facilities (water, energy, infrastructure, etc.) are sometimes perceived as a way to fill in gaps in EC expertise, as means for EU Member States to scale up aid, and as tools to achieve better donor coordination. Nonetheless, possible downsides such as limited ownership and the departure from partner priorities may need to be taken into account more clearly. The enhanced possibilties for co-financing could have potential, but according to some, it remains to be seen whether this modality will further support poverty reduction and contribute to enhanced aid effectiveness.
Staff
More ‘deconcentration’ or devolution of responsibilities to EC Delegations is usually strongly supported. However, this will require more from staff capacities, in order to enable them to deliver the wide variety of elements needed to make EC aid more effective:
- Staff numbers are low relative to the aid budget, especially compared to other donors. This adds pressure to emphasise quantity over quality of cooperation.
- In terms of skills mx, there are relatively few economists or development specialists among the EC’s aid staff. Some also highlight a limited ability of EC staff to engage in political dialogue, which is increasingly necessary because of the rising importance of budget support and governance. In general, it is felt that too much emphasis is placed on financial management, especially for staff in the field.
- Quality: some also doubt performance in areas where staff are supposed to be qualified.
Many respondents so far emphasised the need to review recruitment and training processes in order to support the development of a culture of partnership.
Please consult the initial discussion note for an in-depth discussion of these issues. You are invited to comment.
Recommendations
The following recommendations on EC aid management were made during our interviews with key groups of stakeholders. For an overall list of recommendations, click here.
- Establish one ‘European House’ in each country instead of many embassies (Comment);
- Practical experience from the field has to be taken into account at EU Council of Ministers debate before Accra (Comment);
- Integrate horizontal issues such as gender, environment, conflict-sensitivity etc. better in all programmes (Comment);
- Make sure that new ‘frameworks’ (mechanisms, policy guidelines, etc) are implemented (Comment);
- Make progress in joint programming between the Commission and Member States;
- Use EDF 10 as a test case on a number of key reform issues such as joint programming, division of labour in practice and better ownership of the governance agenda (Comment);
- Improve the recruitment and training of staff involved with development policy (Comment);
- Increase devolution of responsibilities to the field (Comment);
Share your recommendations.
Je vous remercie pour cette idée de donner l’opportunité aux personnes intéressées d’apporter une contribution.
Donc je profite de l’occasion pour apporter des questionnements à la série de question ci-dessus.
Je pense qu’il faut aller souvent au délà des aspects techniques surtout limités à l’entité européenne et se demander quel impact de la coopération européenne pour les populations des pays ACP par exemple? le bénéfice de la coopération sur l’homme an tant qu’acteur de développement? Aussi, Comment mesurer l’impact des aides budgétaires sur les populations à la base? Du premier FED au neuvième FED, on constate que l’aide budgétaire represente plus de 2/3 et c’est dans les pays où le décaissement des fonds est important qu’on constate le plus bas IDH, le cas du Mali est éloquent (Conf. rapport IDH du PNUD 2006). Alors quelle place pour l’homme dans la coopération européenne au développement? Il serait intéressant pour la coopération européenne d’arrêter le nombrilisme stratégique et évoluer vers l’optimisation du potentiel humain en aidant les populations à s’organiser d’abord et de les procurer de véritables moyens de production aux détriments des milliards engloutis dans les aides budgétaires dont -on trouve difficilement les traces (impacts).
Salutations distnguées.
Translation by ECDPM of Dr Moumouni Soumano’s comment (29 January):
We must go beyond technical issues that are often confined to Europe, and ask ourselves what impact European development cooperation has on, for instance, populations of the ACP countries. How does cooperation benefit individuals as development actors? Also, how to measure the impact of budget support at the grassroots level? From the first European Development Fund (EDF) to the ninth EDF, we can see that budget support now represents over two thirds of the total. The countries where disbursements of these funds are most important are also those with the lowest rankings on the Human Development Index (HDI) – Mali is a clear example (see the UNDP’s HDI report of 2006). So what place for man in European development cooperation? It would be interesting for European development cooperation to quit strategic navel-gazing and evolve towards the optimisation of human potential. Development cooperation should help populations to organise themselves first, and provide them with real means of production. This should come at the expense of the billions currently swallowed by budget support, the impact of which can hardly be traced.