C’bean bristles, Europe soothes

Anthony Smallwood said for as long as he can remember the European Commission has been criticised for its heavy procedures in the management of cooperation.

“And as is so often the case, the criticisms may be unreasonable overall but they carry more than a grain of truth,” said Smallwood, Acting Head of Delegation of the European Commission Dele-gation to Trinidad and Tobago.

Smallwood noted it is equally true that the last ten years have seen a very substantial effort by the Commission to improve the way it manages its cooperation programmes.

“Procedures can still be heavy but they are far better than they were, not only on the accounting side but also, and especially, with respect to quality control which is now systematically main-streamed throughout the project cycle.

“We all recognise that it is still work in progress, and there will always be improvements to be made, “ he told Business Day in an interview last week.

But Guyana’s Ambassador to Brussels, Dr PI Gomes said one of the biggest problem remains the slow and piecemeal implementation of the “development assistance” that the EU offers the Caribbean.

“Unless they address the heavy bureaucratic hurdles placed on small countries and reduce giving back so much in consultancies to EU companies, the new strategy will be little more than nice rhetoric, “ he said.

But Gomes said in crafting a “new” strategy, it is reasonable to expect that the EC would critically probe the lessons learnt from the programming and disbursement mechanisms employed for aid to the Caribbean and to what extent the underlying structural problems of high unemployment, low technological advances for productivity and value-added production or services have been addressed by the EU in its contribution to reducing poverty in the Caribbean ACP States.

“Answers to these kinds of question or even references to the debate in the Caribbean on a slavish adoption of IMF/World Bank prescriptions and assessment of the impact of trade liberalisation on commodity trade do not inform the new EU-Caribbean policy, “ he told Business Day.

Europe says it wants to assist Caribbean countries to overcome a number of economic and social challenges as it tries to soften relations which in recent years have grown tense because of changes made in preferential trading arrangements that have impacted negatively on the economies of the smaller countries.

In a document titled, “ An EU-Caribbean Partnership for Growth, Stability and Development” the European Commission (EC) said its strategy is articulated around three axes — shaping a political partnership based on shared values, addressing economic and environmental vulnerabilities and promoting social cohesion and combating poverty.

“In working on these objectives collectively the EU can assist the Caribbean in its quest to fully transform into a region of opportunity, “ according to the document. The objective of the EU Communication on the Caribbean is to highlight how the challenges facing the Caribbean can be transformed into opportunities by focusing on the right ‘policy-mix,’ it said.

Smallwood pointed out that the EC has also “re-jigged” its institutional structures with ‘technical and financial’ cooperation staff in Brussels being moved to a new organisation, Europaid, and subsequently and even more radically, with many posted abroad to delegations as part of a process of decentralising aid management to country level.

“This has been a massive commitment to improved management and the first results are already impressive in terms of more rapid and more coherent implementation,” he said, adding that the most promising development was the EC’s policy commitment to channel much more cooperation funding in future through general or sector-specific budget support rather than through classical projects.

“This is not the easy option that some people think. We still need improved procedures and decentralised management structures and the commitments we expect our ACP partners to make in terms of sound financial and budgetary management and the achievement of agreed targets are rigorous,” the EC official said.

“ But it is not project based and ‘projects’ are frankly where so many of our problems start. And not just because of our procedures but also (and sometimes overwhelmingly so) because of the procedural and managerial shortcomings of some of our partners.”

Challenges facing the Caribbean are recognised in the EU statement: inherent structural features which include natural disasters, vulnerability, openness of the economies, volatility of markets, erosion of preferential trade, drug trafficking and violent crime.

Among the actions it identified for addressing economic and environmental vulnerabilities include support for the completion of the Caribbean Single Market and strengthening regional cooperation.

Gomes says the relationship faces an uncertain future.

“For this and other reasons, one can reasonably argue that the communication holds little promise of making a significant breakthrough on the stagnating and increasingly threatened survival of the marginal gains the Caribbean has achieved since the early 1970s. The real danger does exist and is noted by the Commission that Caribbean societies, with one exception, regarded as “middle income developing societies” face an uncertain future.”

“For this and other reasons, one can reasonable argue that the communication holds little promise of making a significant breakthrough on the stagnating and increasingly threatened survival of the marginal gains the Caribbean has achieved since the early 1970s. The real danger does exist and is noted by the Commission that Caribbean societies, with one exception, regarded as “middle income developing societies” face an uncertain future.”

Gomes also noted that the increasing pressures of globalisation continue to generate tensions and divergence of interests between the EU and the region, citing W TO as an example. Using the recent experience of matters of bananas, sugar, rum and rice, he said these provided a pattern that questions the fundamental basis of the partnership.