EU institutional change
Yesterday’s donors’ conference on Mali organised in Brussels by the EU and France “in close coordination with Mali” pledged over 3 billion euros. It gathered several hundreds representatives from all over the Sahel region, Western Africa, and the world, but was it just another donor-recipient show? The statements made today following the conference will inevitably be equally frustrating, but will the glass be half full or half empty? An electoral renaissance? In many respects, the glass is half full because the country is said to be half way to its next presidential elections, which are ...
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Visibility, everyone wants it, but how well are they achieving it? The EU is consistently criticised for low visibility on its external action, and now the European Parliament is calling for the issue to be dealt with in the on-going Review of the European External Action Service. This blog asks: what has actually been learned from efforts to promote EU visibility in external action? Surprisingly in 2010 the European Commission tasked what was formerly the Joint Evaluation Unit for External Relations to provide an answer to this very question.. ECDPM, along with DRN, led the ...
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Millions of e-mails and documents, exposing the tax-evading activities of thousands of individuals across 170 countries, were recently leaked by a consortium of journalists. Leaks of this scale are rare, particularly in the clandestine world of tax havens and offshore banking. The media and tax justice advocates are hailing it as a “large haul”, but will “offshore leaks” change the tide for illicit financial flows from developing countries? Paper trail or paper tiger? It is not yet clear how much could be hidden by the activities noted in the documents. Estimates show that as much ...
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Staffing issues are all the talk in Brussels at the moment amid heated discussions over the next EU budget. EU Member States want the European Commission (EC) to reduce its staff by more than 5 % over the next 5 years, more than Council President van Rompuy recently proposed. In particular, Member State officials have made critical observations about the size of the Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation – EuropeAid (DG DEVCO). Counting 6.5% of the EC’s Brussels-based staff, it is the second largest of the EC’s offices in Brussels. However, DEVCO staff manages relatively ...
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Each year ECDPM publishes a Policy Brief, on Challenges for EU-Africa Relations, outlining key events and expected trends for the year to come. This year’s ‘Challenges Paper’ will aim in particular to cover the preparatory work for the EU-Africa Summit in 2014, and the major issues that will influence it or be addressed there, as well as the impact these issues might have on future EU-Africa relations. This article provides an initial indication of our plans for the paper that will be published at the end of year. If you have a different take on ...
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Andrew Sherriff co-authored this article. As EU budget negotiations are moving to the concluding phase (Figure 1), the ultimate outcome for development and EU external action spending is still unknown. Clarity on key questions, such as an indication of the amount of development funding available, remain clouded by the impasse and posturing in the wider negotiations. The Cyprus EU Presidency, in its role as “honest broker”, is currently lowering expectations, by saying that if agreement cannot be found on the overall level of the EU budget then all elements inside and outside the budget “will ...
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The EU’s Nobel Peace Prize in a global perspective: no time for self-flagellation or complacency
For some, this was very poor timing or even a joke. For others the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize could not come at a better moment, now that the EU is confronting the deepest economic and financial crisis in its history. Never in the past the European project has been so unpopular amongst its citizens. Some EU member states seem to be more out than in the EU. In spite of the Lisbon Treaty – meant to reinforce the Union’s cohesion and strengthen its standing in foreign relations – Europe is losing ground in the world. ...
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A recent evaluation on the Visibility of EU External Action carried out by ECDPM and the Development Researchers Network concluded that since the reorganization of the EU external action services post-Lisbon a lack of clear direction and leadership on visibility issues has hampered the projection of a strong EU image in international affairs. The evaluation, commissioned two years ago by the European Commission’s former External Relations (Relex) Group of DGs, was concluded in June 2012 and the report presented to EU officials at a seminar on 7 September. During the course of this global evaluation the ...
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Organisational charts in general can’t tell you much about what happens behind the scenes in a company or an institution. They don’t show who is in or out of favour, they don’t map influence and informal lines of communication dictating priorities. However, when looking at previous versions and updates, they help to understand how an organisation is evolving, or at least the formal thinking about how it should. Last week the EEAS published a new version of its organisational chart (dated 1st of May 2012), displaying its internal structure and stating the names of key ...
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The Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) is quite the opposite of what Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, warned of in his now famous speech on the EU’s strategic partners. In the case of the JAES, a policy framework in place since 2007, the strategy is spelled out in Action Plans. Yet the process and political direction of the strategy could be optimized. The JAES is meant to be the EU’s strategy towards Africa as much as Africa’s strategy towards the EU. This concept would mean that the partnership reflects both partners’ priorities. This, ...
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