Brussels, 10/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - Wanting to redirect European development fund resources towards projects pursuing security objectives is a serious error which could jeopardise long-term development goals, said the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) in a press release on 9 June.
The CEMR believes that, in linking development cooperation with border management performance criteria and holding refugees within their borders, the new migration partnership framework that was presented by the European Commission on 7 June (see EUROPE 11567) will have an adverse long-term impact. It argues that the effect of these criteria will be to lead to a short-term approach on the part of third states and to endanger global issues such as climate, inclusive economic growth, and political stability.
While acknowledging that the Commission has correctly identified the root causes of migration, the CEMR says that it “completely fails to see that such causes are best tackled at the local level”. The CEMR, then, is worried that the Commission approach focuses on the national level of sometimes fragile states, arguing that it is at local level, in particular in the towns and cities, that tackling the root causes of migration is best organised. It is imperative, the CEMR states, to invest in local governance capabilities and promote effective decentralisation that gives local authorities clear rights and responsibilities.
The CEMR calls on the Council to: - revise the nature of the partnership framework to remove the linkage between development aid and partner countries' performance in migration “as well as the misuse of development funds for security-related projects”; - give a bigger role to local governments in the design, implementation and evaluation of the compacts with third countries: this will require establishing working relations between local and national governments; - and, more generally, “move beyond traditional state to state models of cooperation” towards one that includes “city to city” cooperation.
The CEMR concludes: “Those measures do not guarantee success, but ignoring them is a 100% guarantee that the declared objectives won't be reached”. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)