THE European Commission yesterday began a major 18 month debate on the future shape of its relationship with the 70 developing countries which are signatories to the Lome Convention.
The current convention (known as `Lome' IV"), which is due for renewal in 2000, embraces the EU's development aid programmes and a system of preferential tariffs for the African Caribbean Pacific group (ACP) of nations.
Introducing a Green Paper to the press yesterday, the Commissioner for Development, Dr Joao de Deus Pinheiro, said that the convention, with its inbuilt democratic structures, provides the possibilities of a unique form of assistance in which recipients had a real sense of "ownership" of their programmes.
But, to build on that and face the challenges of the next century Mr Pinheiro said, required an indepth review which would call all assumptions into question "except our political engagement and solidarity with the ACP countries." That debate, he said, would reflect the reality of huge changes in both needs and political cultures in the developing world. "Ten years ago `privatisation', `human rights', and `good governance' were forbidden words in the lexicon," Dr Pinheiro said. Now they were centre of the political debate.
He said the Green Paper would not set out solutions, but hint in their general direction for a debate that he hoped would be as extensive as possible, involving the Lome countries, NGOs, universities and the public itself.
But, the Commissioner made clear, the emphasis of the Commission would be on key new elements of its development strategy: assistance to the private sector and support for competitiveness and good governance.
Dr Pinheiro also said that was delighted at the progress made in negotiations between EU and the World Bank on the need for sensitivity to the social sector in implementing structural adjustment programmes.
