The EU and its member-states comprise the world's single largest aid bloc. This group accounts for 55 per cent of all development assistance as well as being the biggest market for developing country exports.
Yet even though the EU has been active in the field of development for over 40 years, it has struggled to put a development policy framework in place.
To fill this gap, during the 1990s the EU council of development ministers adopted no less than 17 individual resolutions, covering specific policy areas such as education, gender, food security and HIV/AIDS.
While these resolutions were adopted to guide EU policymaking and aid performance, the absence of a policy framework into which these could be situated contributed significantly to the fragmented, slow and inconsistent delivery of aid as well as to confused rather than coherent policy decision-making. This fuelled a situation, with public disquiet, where despite devastating poverty in the developing world over the past decade almost €20 billion of EU aid funds remains unspent.
In November 2000, the EU council of development ministers adopted a long overdue comprehensive policy framework for its development co-operation activities, the overriding objective of which is poverty reduction. In welcoming this the French president of the council stated: "We [the EU] must put an end to the contradiction between our strong financial aid and weak influence in the international forums where development is discussed. With this declaration we can express our views with a single voice." Another first for the EU occurred in April 2000 when EU and African leaders held their inaugural summit in Cairo. This highlighted the increasing political commitment among European and African leaders to address the challenges, opportunities and problems facing the African continent, a region which has been much neglected in terms of the EU's overall external relations. Disappointingly, the leaders devoted scant attention to civil society as a stakeholder in this process.
The text of the summit's plan of action only includes one sentence on the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in maintaining a vibrant civil society. But for any of the summit's worthy goals in terms of poverty eradication and peace-building to be met the nurturing of a strong and dynamic civil society is a vital task. This is particularly the case over the past decade during which time 42 of the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa held multi-party elections for the first time.
The Cairo summit did not deliver on action to address key concerns such as the ever decreasing level of EU overseas development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, a region which on current projections will continue to require development assistance as a primary source of finance for some time. At the summit leaders promised to "intensify efforts to meet the internationally agreed targets for resource transfers to developing countries" and "expressed their hope for the creation of a world solidarity fund to address Africa's development with a special focus on poverty eradication".
As a first step EU members as a bloc should have set themselves a specific time frame for reaching the 0.7 per cent aid to GNP target as against their current average of 0.34 per cent. (Ireland has already done this.) An ongoing concern, expressed by NGOs in advance of Cairo and other forums is that EU aid spending is often undermined by other aspects of EU external policies. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of trade. Last October Uganda's President Museveni, delivering one of the UCD millennium lectures, focussed on the unfair trade relations between the EU and Africa and called for the EU to open its markets. Why? At present unjust trading practices cost developing countries an astonishing $700 billion a year - almost 14 times what they receive in aid.
The recent Commission proposal to extend tariff and quota-free access for all products (except arms) from the least developed countries deserves a positive welcome though it too is under threat as powerful interests, especially among Europe's heavily-subsidised large-scale sugar farmers, wield their weight. Yet the scale of this gesture by the Commission should not be overstated as the proposal affects imports worth only €78 million. Earlier this month a World Bank study highlighted how trade barriers imposed by the EU and other rich countries on agriculture and processed food imports, along with farm subsidies, have aggravated the problems faced by developing nations, particularly the poorest. The study estimates that OECD countries' agricultural subsidies (much of them through the EU) amounted to about $300 billion per year, a sum roughly equal to the GNP of Africa.
However, many heavily indebted African nations cannot afford basic health and education services for all their citizens let alone subsidies for agricultural producers as external debt payments take precedence in the allocation of scarce budgetary resources.
Interestingly, the World Bank's report also cites research suggesting that a single EU food safety rule, which departs from international standards, cuts health risks by 1.4 deaths per billion but in so doing reduces African exports by $700 million. The potential health impact of investing even a fraction of this $700 million into the health sector of these same African countries in terms of lives saved would be immense.
At a global level trade and debt policies have increasingly been the focus of policy debates and street protests. In general the EU has paid insufficient attention to issues of global economic governance. The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, recently argued for a new global architecture for managing world affairs - both economic and political.
The full text of the article on which this is based can be found in the just published Trocaire Development Review 2000, price £7.50.