Brussels, 18/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - In a report published on Tuesday 18 June, the European Court of Auditors is highly critical of the aid given by the EU to promote key areas of governance in Egypt in the periods before and after the uprising of January 2011. The Court of Auditors considers that the EU's aid is “well-intentioned but ineffective”.
“The 'softly softly' approach has not worked, and the time has come for a more focused approach which will produce meaningful results and guarantee better value for the European taxpayers' money”, stated the author of the report, Karel Pinxten. The audit focused on public finance management and the fight against corruption, and also on human rights and democracy. “The report contains many illustrative findings that show how EU aid has not been effective in improving governance”, the Court of Auditors states in a press release.
For the period 2007-2013, the EU allocated approximately €1 billion to Egypt, with more than half of this funding channelled through Egypt's treasury. The Court of Auditors criticises the European Commission and European External Action Service (EEAS) for failing to ensure that the Egyptian authorities remedied weaknesses in public finance management - weaknesses such as “the lack of budgetary transparency, an ineffective audit function and endemic corruption”. The Commission and EEAS did not react to the lack of progress by taking decisive action to ensure accountability for considerable EU funds, which continued to be paid directly to the Egyptian authorities, the report criticises. The report also underlines that, “despite Egypt's serious problems in the area of corruption, the EU aid has done little to directly address this issue”.
Lack of effectiveness on human rights. The assessments in terms of human rights are no better. The EU's action in this domain made “little progress” and the main human rights programme “was largely unsuccessful”. According to the Court of Auditors, the Commission and EEAS did not use the financial and political leverage at their disposal to counteract the Egyptian authorities' lack of commitment. The funds channelled through civil society organisations were not sufficient to make a discernible difference. And in the Court of Auditors' view, no new major initiative was taken to tackle key human rights issues after the fall of Mubarak, and the measures taken have had little impact to date.
The report underlines that the Commission and EEAS have accepted the Court of Auditors' recommendations. Peter Stano, the spokesperson for European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy Stefan Füle, said that the Commission takes the Court of Auditors' observations very seriously. He regretted, however, that Füle's comments had not been taken into account and said that, since Ashton and Füle have been in office, they have started to reassess neighbourhood policy in order to respond better to the needs of the neighbourhood countries, with the principle of more for more.
In a joint letter to Pinxten on 30 April - a copy of which has been obtained by EUROPE - Ashton and Füle take note of the report and state that the Commission and the EEAS are pleased to accept many of the recommendations made by the Court of Auditors. They regret, however, the negative nature of most of the headings and sub-titles as these do not really reflect the more balanced observations of the Court of Auditors. Ashton and Füle describe these headings and sub-titles as misleading as they do not sufficiently take into consideration the local context and the efforts undertaken to establish a dialogue and cooperation on the difficult issues of governance, democracy and human rights. Ashton and Füle do not believe that the positive developments are sufficiently reflected in the Court of Auditors' report.
ALDE calls on Ashton and Füle to justify themselves. The leader of the European Parliament's ALDE Group, Guy Verhofstadt, underlined that this report proves that “the EU is not taking its conditionality seriously regarding Egypt”. “The EU failed to suspend aid to Egypt when President Morsi grabbed even more power in November 2012, nor when 43 NGO workers were sentenced to jail. This inaction by the EU makes a joke of its human rights policy”, he stated. He called for Ashton and Füle to explain themselves before the Parliament. (CG/transl.fl)