Executive summary
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- ORIGINAL SIGNATORIES – 1975 Lomé I
- Lomé II 1980 (New member states )
- Lomé III 1985 (new member states)
- Lomé IV 1990 (new member states)
- Revision of Lomé IV 1995
- Cotonou Agreement 2000
- 2004 Accession to Cotonou
- TABLE 4 : MEMBERSHIP OF EUROPEAN UNION INDICATING ACCESSION DATES
Adapted from source: www.europa.eu.int TABLE 3 : LIST OF ACP COUNTRIES: SIGNATORIES TO LOMÉ & COTONOU AGREEMENTS
Adapted from source: www.europa.eu.int The European Development Fund came into being in 1958 and stood alone as a separate fund because at the time the European Community had no other external actions. The European Development Fund (EDF) is a pluriennial fund for grants to the ex-colonies and has gone through 9 five-year processes to reach the form it now takes in the 9th EDF and the recently approved 10th EDF whose value is yet unknown. The present EDF which still stands outside the budget provisions of Heading 4, but for which the European Parliament still needs to give discharge on the use of its resources, consists of: Long-term envelope €10 billion Regional envelope € 1,3 billion Investment facility € 2,2 billion (applied by the European Investment Bank) (There is a conditional balance of €1 billion to which reference will be made in Chapter 3.) Provision for the two organs of the ACP Group, amount, for the Centre for Development of Enterprise (CDE), to €90 million and for the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development, to €70 million.20 For 2006/7 €64m is earmarked out of the conditional €1bn. To this must be added €25 million for the management by the CDE of PROINVEST, an EC body to promote investment and do in-depth investment studies.
The EEC now signed an agreement called the Lomé Convention (Lomé I) and the members of the group grew from 18 (Yaoundé) to 46 while the number of EEC countries had increased from 6 to nine. The enlargement process of the EU is given in Table 4: TABLE 4 : MEMBERSHIP OF EUROPEAN UNION INDICATING ACCESSION DATES
Adapted from Europa – The EU at a glance www.europa.eu.int Some of those interviewed regarded the geographic dispersion of the ACP Group over the Caribbean, the Pacific and Africa as a weakness with potential fault lines for its cohesion. This view is not universally held: the more plausible opinion holds that the spread over diverse peoples and countries in the developing world gives the ACP Group a unique advantage in bringing, firstly, the two outlying parts of this organisation into the centre of the Africa debate where the world focus lies presently, and secondly, provides sub-Saharan Africa with fresh and objective vision and analysis in its debates and development policy. Moreover, the ACP Group, with the African diaspora which is attracting even further attention, has an historic, social and cultural link which is only now surfacing in practical ways – the Bob Marley phenomenon which stretched across the Atlantic, is evidence of the sentimental and psychological strength of this link. In this respect, the ACP Group has a unique advantage over the African Union because the relationship with the Caribbean is at its strongest in sub-Saharan Africa. But, there is also the ethnic link between the Pacific and Madagascar which has yet to find its expression in the ACP context. These social attachments comprise yet another sentimental and useful relationship, as is the presence of citizens whose ancestors originated from the Indian sub-continent. They are potentially a cultural bridge to the formation of formal ties with India. Mauritius, South Africa, Trinidad and Guyana already celebrate the relationship. Combined, these several cultural links lend a role to the ACP Group unlike any other. The relationship with Europe is long-standing and both the Commonwealth and the Agence Intergouvernementale de la Francophonie make the relationship the foundation of their activities in the cultural field and cross-border publishing, films, TV documentaries, music, drama and art are seen not just as a social/cultural link but also an economic and productive link. The first recommendation of this Study relates to the unique interlinking in the ACP Group. Pursuant to the successful ACP Group Conference of Ministers of Culture, there is a fruitful follow-up that can earn and provide solidarity as required by the Presidents and Heads of Government. It is recommended that a study be launched into the formation in the Secretariat of an Event Division with the purpose of seeking co-operation in the private sector/impresario sector for organising music, art and performing arts events and TV documentaries on which the ACP Group can put its stamp of approval – at a price – thereby generating disposable funds, but also indemnifying it from losses. The stamp of approval of the ACP Group could become the seal of Good Housekeeping to which reference would be made. It is noteworthy that the Agence Intergouvernementale de la Francophonie lists cultural events in the economic rubric of its activities – an income generator. In the time of the Cold War, the numerical strength of the ACP Group gave it a political leverage and an importance for the EEC. Its weight both in representing a large portion of the developing world and its numerical political strength was recognised by the EEC by the continued renewal of the Lomé Convention through five versions until its replacement by the Cotonou Partnership Agreement in 2000 and its revision in February 2005. Notable was the role of ACP votes in electing Pascal Lamy to the Head of the WTO. The shift from Lomé to Cotonou is a manifestly political reorientation on the part of the now European Union and attention is drawn to Table 5 below. Development co-operation is placed in the form of a political agenda requiring political obligations by the ACP Group members to be fulfilled as a precondition for the provision of budgetary and project aid out of the European Development Fund to ACP members. Already the consequences of this change of direction have been seen in the case of Zimbabwe and Kenya. Furthermore, peaceful resolution of disputes also affects development disbursements: the EU, with the approval of the ACP Group, diverted funds from the Intra-ACP funding in terms of Annex I Art. 3(b) to the African Union for the Africa Peace Initiative: over these funds the ACP Group has absolutely no supervisory function even though they are at base ACP-specific funds! In the revision of Annex IV of the Cotonou Agreement, in states in conflict, the EC can even take over the functions of the former authorities in development aid21. The EC has given itself wide room for manoeuvre in diverting some €1,5 billion, with the consent of the ACP Group, to large-scale initiatives such as the health programme managed by the World Health Organisation (Global Fund for combating AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis), the water project and the African Peace Initiative, managed by the African Union. This is a marked change from the past – there is no co-management of these funds as Article 57(4) of the Cotonou Agreement provides: this is also the principle that governed how the Chief Authorising Officer controlled the EDF in terms of Annex IV Chapter 6 – the Chief Authorising Officer is now replaced in the revised Annex IV by “the Commission” and even where the Commission is involved in what is termed “centralised method”, it is hard to discern how “decentralised management” can in any way be involved in these particular disbursements. The funds are spent outside the normal management of the EDF. Furthermore, the ACP-EC Development Finance Committee is also blindsided in how these delegated funds are regulated. This deviation in the way the EC deals with the distribution of the funds dedicated to the ACP Group is interpreted by some involved in the preparation of this Study as a desire on the part of the EC to spend large sums partly for the purpose of satisfying the need to increase absorption and avoid the impediments encountered in passing through the Partnership principle. The ACP Group needs to take a hard look at the consent it grants and its effect on its bailiwick and this Study recommends that the co-management principle be reintroduced for such delegated funding. The leap from development accompanied by political inputs as provided for in the Lomé Convention, to the firm linking in the Cotonou Agreement of development funding for recipients to political behaviour, human rights and economic transparency in governance (in line with the EU’s external activities towards other developing countries) is illustrated neatly in Table 5. This policy shift on the part of AidCo and the Commission for Development is accompanied by other new measures such as budget support instead of project aid, regional “partnership” agreements and delegation of operational powers to the local level with centralised policy control: TABLE 5: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOME & COTONOU AGREEMENTS
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