TRADE-EU: DEALS WITH AFRICA A 'PR DISASTER'
David Cronin
BRUSSELS (IPS) - Trade talks between the European Union and African countries have been a public relations "disaster" for the Brussels bureaucracy, a high-ranking official confessed Feb. 26.
Thirty-five of almost 80 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have so far signed Economic Partnership Agreements with the EU. The accords commit ACP states to removing most tariffs they levy on imported goods.
Klaus Rudischhauser, director of ACP relations in the European Commission, said that the EU executive had always viewed these agreements as positive tools for economic development. "I'm still convinced that they are, but the problem has been a huge communications failure," he added.
Rudischhauser conceded that the way the agreements were "perceived" as harmful by anti-poverty activists in ACP countries had presented the Commission with major difficulties. In future, he said, the Commission will have to take non-governmental organisations in poor countries "more seriously". But he admitted it could be too late to persuade them to adopt a more positive stance towards EU trade policies.
"I'm not sure we will be able to climb back up the hill on EPAs," he said.
Rudischhauser was one of the speakers at a conference in Brussels examining the implications of the EU's new Lisbon treaty for the fight against poverty.
Signed in the Portuguese capital in late 2007, the treaty will come into effect after it has been ratified by all of the EU's countries. Ireland is alone among the 27 member states in putting the treaty to a referendum. The Irish poll is expected to take place in May.
The treaty formally recognises that the eradication of poverty is the key objective of EU development aid policy.
But Stefan Weidinger, head of the development division in Austria's foreign ministry, questioned whether the Union is genuinely committed to ending hardship.
Based on his experience of following EU debates for more than a decade, Weidinger said he had concluded that pursuing the "high principle of poverty eradication has degenerated into mere lip-service."
He suggested that efforts to ensure that aid given to particular countries reaches the poorest are inadequate. "We have to know who the poor are," he said. "But they do not run around with tags saying (they live on) less than two dollars a day. Direct targeting is very difficult. If we can't directly target, we have to make sure the trickle-down effect is as strong as possible."
Louise Hilditch from ActionAid's Brussels office said there is a "lack of consensus" among European policy-makers about "what is meant by poverty eradication". Until greater clarity is achieved on this matter, discussions about Europe's activities will be "in a vacuum," she remarked.
Other participants in the conference offered a more positive assessment of the treaty's likely effects.
Gareth Thomas, a British minister for international development, said that as the world's largest aid donor, the EU had helped to bring basic education to 11 million children in India between 2001 and 2006.
Under Lisbon, the goal of eradicating poverty will be enshrined in an EU treaty for the first time, he said.
Yet he argued that the treaty needs to be implemented in a way that guarantees "greater consistency" between the EU's stance towards poor countries. It "does not make sense", he said, that the EU now has one commissioner for development aid, who deals with political relations with Africa, and another holding an external relations portfolio, who handles relations with poor countries in Asia and Latin America.
One of the institutional innovations that will result from the treaty will be that the Union will appoint a political representative akin to a foreign minister. Yet rather than being called a minister, he or she will have the title of high representative for foreign and security policy. The high representative will be both< (END)
