Brussels, 23/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - EU aid for Haiti's rehabilitation after the devastating earthquake there on 12 January 2010 was well designed overall but, due to a lack of coordination and adequate management of the risks threatening the achievement of its programmes and the fulfilment of their objectives, the programmes were not implemented effectively enough, states the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in a special report (No 13/2014) published on Tuesday 23 September.
Like the other donors, the European Commission came up against serious obstacles that compromised its support efforts. Managing its aid in partnership with weak national authorities while trying to ensure quick support is no easy task, the ECA recognises. It is nevertheless convinced that the European Commission could have done better. For the future, during operations conducted in countries that have just suffered a catastrophe or are in a fragile situation, the ECA recommends the Commission to improve its risk management; to adopt a common strategy to establish links and create synergies between the emergency aid, rehabilitation aid and development aid; to promote jobs and essential reforms in public finance management when it comes to granting budgetary support, and to plan shorter term measures when necessary in order to protect EU funds from waste, loss and ineffectiveness; and to implement continuity procedures for activities providing for arrangements for the redeployment of intervention staff.
Out of the 13 programmes examined by the ECA, ten permitted the planned objectives to be achieved, or are likely to permit their achievement - albeit late. For three programmes, including the general budgetary support programme under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF), the progress made has been limited. The monitoring of the programmes was based on an appropriate framework, but the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) did not take measures at the right time to be able to strengthen the resources of the EU delegation, which had insufficient capacity to perform on-the-spot visits, the ECA states. In addition, the emergency aid, rehabilitation and development were not sufficiently linked because of the lack of a clear common strategy for Haiti from general directorates (DG) ECHO and EuropeAid - a strategy that would have enabled synergies to be optimised and a transition to have been made smoothly between the respective activities of the two DGs. (AN)