E.U. grand on promise, short on delivery

LONDON, AUG. 6. A damning report by British MPs will this week reveal that the European Union takes an average of four years and two months to deliver aid to victims of global disasters.

It will disclose that nearly two years after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America, leaving almost 7,000 people dead, the E.U. has failed to deliver a penny of the œ170-million package pledged to help survivors.

The report will accuse European commissioners of ``gesture politics'' because they have a history of announcing grand aid packages to the Third World without having a clue how the money should be spent on the ground.

Mismanagement and ``Kafkaesque'' bureaucracy at the Brussels- based European Commission is to blame, according to the report by the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development. It takes 40 signatures by different officials before a single contract for development in a poor country can be amended.

In addition, the committee will say that the E.U. aid programme to the Third World favours countries neighbouring the Union. Morocco, a former French colony, gets the largest share, followed by the Balkans. This means that there is less available for the poorest regions of sub-Saharan Africa or Asia.

The committee will reject the Commission's explanation for this - that it is seeking to help nearby countries where instability would pose a security threat to Europe - and says that upheavals in Africa would also threaten Europe's interests.

The report will call for wholesale reforms of the Commission's aid-giving programme and management and the creation of a single unit answerable to one senior commissioner to oversee aid.

Members of the committee visiting Brussels last month to interview officials, discovered that nothing had yet been delivered to Honduras, one of the countries worst affected by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Floods and torrents of mud left tens of thousands of people homeless and devastated the country's fragile economy.

Its criticisms will vindicate Ms. Clare Short, Britain's International Development Secretary, who has described E.U. aid- giving as the ``worst in the world'' for sheer bungling.

Around œ175 million was promised by the E.U. to the four countries devastated by the hurricane - El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.

So far the European Commission has failed to distribute any of that money. A spokesman for external relations at the Commission said: ``The first tranche - about œ57 million - will be there by October. This has been no bigger delay than normal. It takes time to go through all the various hoops in Brussels.''

Mr. Chris Patten, the former Conservative Minister, is the commissioner responsible for external relations. A member of his cabinet, Mr. Patrick Child, told The Sunday Telegraph: ``Hurricane Mitch has been a classic example of a case when the Commission did not have the resources to do what it had been asked to do.

``It is true that there is an average delay of four years between the commitment to pay out humanitarian and reconstruction aid and its actual delivery by the Commission. Mr. Patten has been the first to say that this is too long a period.''

Mr. Child denied that the Commission was solely to blame for the ongoing failure to deliver Hurricane Mitch aid money. ``Member states decide on grand aid projects,'' he said. ``But they do not give the Commission the resources to deliver. We need more personnel dedicated to delivering aid.'' The E.U. has a history of poor delivery and serial bungling in its aid programme. It spent œ16 millions building a hospital in Gaza which has stood empty for more than a year because no provision was made for equipment or staff.

It pledged œ650 millions last year to the International Trust Fund to remove landmines in Bosnia, matching a similar sum from the United States. However, the aid was cancelled because it was not spent within a deadline.

Nine years ago, the Chinese asked for aid to farmers in Tibet. The E.U. pledged support but took until 1998 to sign a contract with Beijing. To date, the E.U. has failed to spend any of its promised share of œ5 million, even though the Chinese Government has spent almost all of its own share, worth œ9 millions.

In another example of the uniquely European bureaucracy, the Kosovan reconstruction agency was ordered to conduct all of its business in all 11 E.U. languages, paralysing attempts to disburse around œ201 millions of urgently needed assistance.

Every year, Britain takes back œ100 millions from the E.U. which the Commission has budgeted for aid programmes to the Third World but, despite desperate need across the world, proved incapable of actually spending.

The report will conclude that Europe has the potential to make a significant impact on alleviating international poverty and crises - but only if it carries out major internal reforms.

Eurosceptic British MPs seized on the disclosures as evidence that the European Commission was inefficient and unaccountable.

Mr. Julian Brazier, the Conservative MP for Canterbury, said: ``It is absolutely shocking that it could take four years before the victims of a disaster are given the relief they are promised.

``It illustrates just how bureaucratic and unaccountable the Commission still is and why many of us believe Britain should deliver her aid through good non-governmental organisations rather than through Europe.''

Mr. Julian Lewis, the Tory MP for New Forest East, said any national government which mismanaged programmes so badly would be ``pilloried''. He added: ``Unfortunately the citizens of the E.U. have no such means of holding the Commission to account while the supposed recipients of this aid money are unable to improve things.''

- @ Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2000.

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