Balance of development aid budget sparks dispute

Date: 04/07/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

THE European Parliament's development committee is resisting changes to the EU budget which would increase funds for Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East at the expense of poorer nations.

British Socialist MEP Glenys Kinnock is chastising the Commission and the Council of Ministers for emphasising the importance of development aid in their speeches and then cutting the budget.

“What we see is narrow, immediate self-interest versus long-term development,” she says, pledging that the committee will go into battle for development funding.

Kinnock has also criticised planned cuts in EU cooperation with aid agencies. “What concerns me is that we are seeing here clear evidence of a change in priorities in the Union towards the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe - away from the poorest countries in the world,” she says.

The change in priorities was agreed by EU leaders at their summit in Cannes last year, when they decided to spend 6.7 billion ecu on Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) from 1995-99 and 4.7 billion ecu on the dozen North African and Middle Eastern nations bordering the Mediterranean.

“They are the two areas where we have more of an interest in stability, as well as commercial interests,” said a Commission official, explaining the logic of spending more on helping nations some of which are potential future EU members and all of which are next-door neighbours.

Against this backdrop, the committee's attempts to champion the cause of developing nations and reverse the shift in spending during its deliberations on the Union's 1997 budget are unlikely to succeed.

Governments will argue that MEPs should take into account the fact that an enormous amount of EU funding still goes to sub-Saharan Africa. Money for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations for the same 1995-99 period amounts to 13.3 billion ecu, although it is kept outside the EU's general budget in a separate pool called the European Development Fund (EDF).

Kinnock and the development committee complain that funds are being increased for the Mediterranean region next year despite the fact that the region has not spent what it was given this year. In fact, the funds have been blocked all year by Athens, which will not allow them to be distributed because they include money for Turkey. Commission officials say that once the Greek blockade is lifted, Mediterranean states will be able to absorb the funding quickly through numerous projects ready and waiting for the cash.

The Parliament, which has authority over Union spending, will debate the 1997 budget in its October plenary session.