Brussels, 08/08/2000 (Agence Europe) - EU aid to third countries being delivered with unacceptably slowness, an average of four and a half years, the European Commission should not content itself to half baked reforms, feels the House of Commons International Development Committee in an official report published this Tuesday after having been widely reported in the British press (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.2). The Commission, one can read in this report, "should abandon its usual half-measures and have the courage to reform itself". The British MPs notably call for only one Commissioner to be responsible for external aid. Another criticism: the emphasis placed by the EU on South Eastern Europe and the Middle East to the detriment of the poorest regions, according to British MPs.
Commissioners Patten and Nielson have reacted by once more recalling that the problems denounced in the report a presently the object of a reform started last May by the Commission (creation of an agency responsible for external aid projects, modification of procedures…). They also took advantage of the opportunity to underline that the reform can not succeed without "the support of the Member States" who must enable the Commission, which suffers "from a recurrent lack of personnel", to have enough people to manage the projects that the Council and Parliament entrust to it.