Officials lack awareness on poverty, Commission admits EU officials have little awareness about how to prevent the Union’s policies from exacerbating global poverty, a new European Commission study has found.
Published last week, the Commission’s report examines the ‘coherence’ between the EU’s development aid policies and those on such areas as trade, the environment, migration, agriculture, fisheries and security.
Although it concludes that progress is being made to ensure that the benefits of development aid are not undermined by other EU-sponsored activities inimical to the poor, it finds that the concept of policy coherence is not sufficiently “institutionalised”.
Officials working in Commission departments that do not deal directly with development aid tend to have a low awareness of policy coherence, the report finds.
It urges that particularly close attention be paid to environmental issues. The production of biofuels, for example, could bring economic benefits to poor countries, yet this could also trigger deforestation and damage to water and soil, it says.
The report advocates, too, that EU states which recruit health and education professionals from poor countries should examine how they can help ensure that skills attained by these workers are used in their native countries. And it says that the EU’s activities on scientific research and technology could be “better exploited” in such a way that they contribute to the fight against poverty.
EU-Africa summit mired in row over Mugabe Planning for an EU-Africa summit in December has become embroiled in the question of whether Zimbabwe’s autocratic president Robert Mugabe should be invited to attend.
In 2002, the EU imposed a travel ban on Mugabe after it was alleged that he rigged an election in favour of his ZANU-PF party.
Portugal, the current holder of the Union’s presidency, is grappling with the conundrum of whether it should respect that ban or flout it by inviting Mugabe to attend the EU-Africa summit it wants to hold in Lisbon this December.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made plain that he will not be attending the event if Mugabe does. “President Mugabe is the only African leader to face an EU travel ban,” Brown wrote recently in London daily The Independent. “There is a reason for this – the abuse of his own people.”.
But several African leaders are likely to boycott the summit if Mugabe – still regarded fondly by his peers for his history of opposing British colonialism and apartheid in South Africa – is excluded. Levy Mwanawasa, President of neighbouring Zambia, has already said he will not go if Mugabe does not receive an invitation.
Although Luis Amado, Portugal’s foreign minister, has said he would prefer to see Brown attend than Mugabe, he made clear that the invitations have not yet been sent out.
Brown has also suggested appointing an EU envoy to help Zimbabwe with what he called a “transition to democracy”.
EPA could destroy Ghana’s chicken industry, farmers warn Ghana’s poultry industry could be wiped out if a new free trade agreement with the EU is introduced, a farm leader has predicted.
Under the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) which the European Commission wants African countries to sign by the end of this year, Ghana would be required to remove its tariffs on most imports from the EU.
The country’s meat industry has already suffered significantly from imports of heavily subsidised EU products in recent years. The quantity of European chicken sent to the country exceeded 40,000 tonnes in 2004.
John Dziwornu, President of the Ghana National Farmers and Fishermen Association, said: “Farmers in the country cannot compete with products from the EU and the USA, especially with the huge subsidies for their farmers.”
Meanwhile, anti-poverty activists have designated this Thursday (27 September) an international day of action against the EPAs. The Belgian organisation 11.11.11 will mark the occasion by hosting a protest outside the European Commission’s trade department in Brussels.
Trade deals could hurt poor’s access to medicines The European Commission has signalled that it will push for provisions that would restrict access to medicines in poor countries in its external trade agreements.
Last week, the Commission urged South Korea to accept that there should be a clause on ‘data exclusivity’ in the free trade agreement that Seoul is currently negotiating with the EU. Data exclusivity covers the length of time which information used to make a medicine under patent cannot be used by manufacturers of generic drugs.
The effect of inserting this clause would be that drug regulators in Korea would be legally obliged to ensure that generic medicines made in or imported into the country do not use data protected under intellectual property rules.
The humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has voiced unease about the Commission’s latest move. MSF believes that if the Commission succeeds in having this provision in a deal with Korea, it would then be able to have similarly stringent provisions in free trade agreements with poorer countries.
“Data exclusivity undermines access to affordable medicines,” said Alexandra Heumber, an MSF campaigner in Brussels.
Commission urges climate change alliance with poor An alliance should be built with poor countries to help them deal with the effects of climate change, the European Commission has recommended.
In a policy paper published on 18 September, the Commission notes that €50 million in EU funds have already been earmarked to assist poor countries struggling to cope with global warming in 2008-10. “But substantially more resources are needed”, it adds.
Earlier this year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the poor will bear the brunt of global warming, even though they have caused the least amount of damage to the atmosphere. Some 250 million Africans face water shortages by 2020, it forecast.
The Commission’s paper says that the main tenets of a plan to help poor countries deal with climate change should include reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, better preparedness for disasters and ensuring that EU development aid policy pays greater attention to environmental issues.
