Development policy - From now on, a greater focus on the ACP

Development policy in Greece is in the hands of a true connoisseur.  Athanasios Theodorakis, former Director-General for Development at the European Commission, is the head of the Directorate General for International Development, Cooperation - Hellenic Aid. He is undertaking major reforms with the aim of focusing development aid on the ACP countries, instead of concentrating principally on either the Balkans or the Caucasus - Georgia, Armenia Azerbaijan,   Moldova , Ukraine or Montenegro or - in the Middle East -  Egypt or the Palestinian territories. 
 
Another aim of the reform, according to Atanassios Theodorakis, is to tie in better with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and aims to increase the effectiveness and political coherence of the aid programme. The proportion of GDP allocated by Greece to development aid is about 0.17%, and given the financial crisis there are no plans to increase this. "There will be fewer projects and fewer beneficiary countries, but there will be a greater impact for the people, which means a new legal framework and new instruments. The priority sectors for Greek aid are health, education and the prevention of and adaptation to climate change, as well as support for democracy and for certain sectors of the population, including women." 

The strength of compassion

Development policy in Greece is currently the object of periodic peer review carried out by the OECD. The government is taking advantage of this to highlight the main strands of its reform and its new focus on the ACP nations. Special attention will be paid to the LDCs, in whose interest the government is working on a strategic plan that should be completed by the end of the year and implemented by 2015, a key date for the MDGs. In terms of development aid, Greece has already been active in countries like Ethiopia, the Congo (DRC) and the Ivory Coast, and its humanitarian arm has also intervened in ACP countries such as Haiti after the earthquake at the start of the year 2010; more recently aid has focused on the crisis in the Mediterranean, using its military and even commercial vessels to help to evacuate foreigners, including Sub-Saharan Africans, from Libya. One of the slogans of Hellenic Aid is "the strength of compassion." 

Transferring its own experience to the ACP

One of the country’s trump cards is that, since joining the European Union, it has benefitted from EU development funds, thereby obtaining valuable know-how. The country now looks forward to passing this on to the ACP countries. "For example, we have tried-and-tested skills in combining the needs of the tourist industry and the development of local agriculture and infrastructure, among other sectors. We also have expertise in forging links between tourism and culture. Rhodes and on a larger scale the whole region of the Dodecanese and Crete, provide good examples of how the multi-sector tourism and development dynamic has enabled us to create study centres of a high standard. This expertise would surely be very useful to the islands of the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean. To sum up, then, our experience of local development can now be placed at the service of the ACP countries." 

Hegel Goutier