Brussels, 18/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The policy debate of foreign ministers on improving the Community's external aid was fuelled by a quantified interim report that the Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten presented to the Council on Monday, on progress achieved and efforts still to be made to attain the goal sought by the reform of aid management - more strategic aid, more uniform, more de-centralised and more effective. It enabled ministers to express their commitment in favour of greater impact and visibility of Union assistance to developing countries -all regions together - and their will not only to let development ministers debate the exercise of the reform begun by the Commission in May 2000.
The interim report refers to progress in strategic planning and assessment of aid (over 100 strategies per country or region have been completed or are well advanced), the unification of the cycle of projects under the auspices of EuropAid, the de-concentration of the Commission's powers of management towards its delegations (10 delegations already enjoy the transfer of powers, 7 are on the verge of doing so, a second wave of de-concentration relating to 26 delegations are being prepared), in the reduction in "sleeping commitments" (reduced to 20 billion euro end-2001, or 590 million less than end-2000), and in the speed of releasing funds committed (in 2001, 5.33 billion euro was necessary out of 5.76 billion euro committed, and since the budget 2002, implementation of the budget has been very satisfactory, with a release of 3,104 million euro, out of the 3,617 million committed). Progress is not however yet expected in the co-ordination plan for implementing the programmes..
The main points of agreement to have emerged from the debate on the reform were summarised by the Spanish Presidency as follows: 1) success in deepening and developing regional strategies to support the Community's external policies; 2) utility of undertaking case studies on different countries to analyse the consistency between Community action and that of Member states, and improve co-ordination; 3) need to enhance the role of the Commission in the exercise at the deconcentration of management powers and to spread out the staff and technical means at the disposal of Commission delegations in different countries to succeed in the decentralisation.
At the end of the debate, the Council asked the relevant working group to work, in close collaboration with the Commission, on the three pillars (development co-operation, justice-home affairs, CFSP) when drawing up strategies for countries, to see how to strengthen the role of the Union in international organisations, especially the UN, to see how to use the procedure enabling for a release of funds that have not been mobilised so as to fuel available financial resources available for the common foreign and security policy (Cfsp) and create reserves allowing to face unexpected crises (crises that the Community recently experienced in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan), and to reflect on means to improve the quality of the aid, especially support for democracy and in the development of the institutional capacities of beneficiary countries.