In the past years at least € 1 billion of EU development aid is - TopicsExpress



          

In the past years at least € 1 billion of EU development aid is wasted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the report which was published yesterday by the European Court, located in Luxembourg. De auditors evaluated 16 different projects which took place between 2001 and 2013 in Congo to the value of € 1,9 billion. Less than half of the projects meets the expectations. Moreover it applies that for projects who actually had results, those results will dissapear after a while. “Sustainability is an unrealistic prospect in most cases.” the report states (pdf). Examples In one example is named that the EU paid for a new court house and prisons in eastern DRC, but “the number of buildings planned was simply too large and the Congolese authorities have no money … to sustain them.” Inn 2005 the EU also helped to equip and train a police force of 1,000 officers, “but when we came down there in 2012 and checkek, we could find no sign of that police force any longer… we could find no trace of it.” The report concludes that effectiveness of the EU aid for good governance in Congo is limited. The aid is in most of the cases organized based on a good strategy aimed on good governance. At some point results are achieved. However the plans are often too ambitious and the European Commission and EEAS have underestimated risks as corruption. The absence of political will, fraud and corruption and the donor-driven dynamics of the program, and not intervening in time has led to the situation that projects were not succesful. Conclusion The report states that if the EU keeps aiding Congo, there should be more effort on aid effectiveness, setting realistic, achievable goals and concrete demands on the Congolese authorities regarding the fulfillment of agreed conditions. The report does not state the question wether the EU should aid Congo in the future anyway, that is after all a political consideration. It also not adresses the question how many money drawned because of corruption and where it went. The auditors back in June also said some €1 billion of EU funding for Egypt in 2011 to 2013 vanished, mainly due to Egyptian state corruption. The Court,located in Luxembourg is known for it’s critical reports on EU bookkeeping. Chairman of the EU Council, Herman van Rompuy in a speech held on 13 september said that this generates negative PR about the EU. He called to take this into account.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 08:57:30 +0000

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