A code of conduct to avoid a duplication of European aid
Rather than stepping on people’s toes, start cooperating and make the most of added values. Such is the European Commission’s ambition in seeking to boost the effectiveness of EU aid to developing countries by avoiding counterproductive duplication.
Marlène Dumas, Big artists are big people, 1987. Ink and wax on paper 31 x 22 cm.
Courtesy Sindika Dokolo African collection of contemporary art.
The voluntary code of conduct it proposed on 28 February aims to act on this ambition by providing the Member States and Commission with a set of guiding principles to ensure that their actions are complementary and provide a fair coverage of countries in need of aid. This is to avoid some countries being the ‘aid favourites’, while other needy candidates are neglected. Based on the goal of a better division of tasks, the code of conduct will guarantee increased complementarity of interventions within a single beneficiary country; the limiting of intervention by each donor country in any one partner country to two priority sectors, and finally the possibility for one European donor country to delegate to another the implementation of its aid programme in a specific field.
“There are too many donors active in the same country, in the same sectors. These overlaps generate unnecessary administrative expenditure,” said European Development Commissioner Louis Michel. “It is not normal for one finance minister in a developing country to receive an average of 200 missions from donors a year and, in Kenya, for 20 donors to purchase medicines through 13 procurement bodies”. The code of conduct was approved by Europe’s development ministers on 15 May in Brussels.
