| MONTERREY,
Mexico -- The European Union, the world's biggest
aid donor, said Thursday it was working to speed
up delivery of aid to poor nations and keep bureaucratic
bottlenecks to a minimum. Europe also rejected
the idea of some developing nations that further
institutions should be created to monitor aid
disbursement. In response to criticism this week
by leaders of
several developing nations at the International
Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey,
Poul Nielson, the European Commissioner for Development
and Humanitarian Aid, said that although aid
delivery was up to each of the 15 countries in
the world's
biggest trading bloc, the executive commission
of the EU was pushing to reduce the gap between
pledges and disbursement.
The
Brussels-based commission is responsible for the
disbursement of roughly $5.5 billion or 20 percent
of the EU's total annual aid budget that currently
amounts to $25.4 billion. "We are acutely aware
of this discussion," said Nielson. "When
I took office in 1999, the level of existing commitments
against the speed of delivery translated into 4.6
years. This figure was reduced the following year
to 4.1 years, and to 3.6 years by end of last year," he
said.
Nielson, the former Danish development minister,
is widely credited by diplomats with being behind
the push not only to speed up delivery, but also
to get the leaders of the EU to agree to a new
aid package which effectively reversed the downward
trend of official development assistance (ODA).
At their summit in Barcelona last week, EU leaders
agreed to an average ODA target of 0.39 percent
of national income by the year 2006.
Although this falls short of the UN target of
0.7, it represents an additional $7 billion,
more than the latest US increase of $5 billion
annually from that year.
In
Monterrey this week, the prime ministers of
Norway, Denmark,
Sweden, Luxembourg and the
Netherlands issued a joint statement urging leaders
to "do what it takes" to meet the UN
target and halve the proportion of people living
in extreme poverty by 2015.
"Our system has been organized very rigidly
allocating assistance country by country, and
in times of breakdown and conflict, the money
remains on the shelf for when things improve.
Thus, for example, there was development assistance
money waiting for Mozambique after the conflict,
and for Nigeria after the end of military rule," Nielson
said. "The whole point is that when democracy
returns, there is a democracy dividend."
He also reminded world leaders that he was constantly
seeking to balance the reality of the mandate
from voters and taxpayers in Europe against the
reality of the requirements in poor nations.
The commission also had to subject its decisions
to scrutiny by the European Parliament in Strasbourg,
France.
He
called the EU Barcelona meeting and the Monterrey
conference
major breakthroughs that had come
about because the goals had been set at the UN
Millennium conference. He said that in the late
1990s, donor nations did not like the demanding
language of nations in the south, and that considerable
argument had ensued. "The rationale has
not been changed by the September 11 terrorist
attacks, it has been accentuated," he said
explaining the breakthrough. "Poverty and
the dangers of marginalization were there already,
and our understanding of it may have improved.
The Millennium summit gave us the inspirational
tools." Europe had worked hard to improve
its aid budgets, and had done so through a "very
transparent" process. He insisted that EU
aid did not consist merely of hand-outs, but
was part of a well planned program, which was
clear and predictable to its partners in the
ACP Group of African, Caribbean and Pacific nations,
with aid allocations decided five years in advance.
In
a message to developing nations, Nielson added, "The recipients need to clarify their
needs better. The notion of ownership should
be strengthened to manage donors as their partners." Nielson,
who will be traveling to Johannesburg, South
Africa later this year for the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, said that summit would
be an important chance to take stock now that
the goals have been set.
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