The primacy of self-interest

«We must provide development cooperation in order to help and protect ourselves.» This reasoning is being heard with growing frequency in Europe. In practical terms, this could mean the subordination of development to other policies, a move away from the global principle of solidarity, and towards the primacy of self-interest.

Economic interests as the guiding principle

As an example of this, the coalition contract of Germany's new CDU/FDP Government reads: «Foreign policy and development cooperation must better complement and mesh with each other. Development policy decisions must appropriately take account of the interests of the German economy, in particular, of small business.» This represents a clear shift of focus away from the earlier guiding themes of poverty reduction, securing peace, and the fair conduct of globalisation, which the SPD-CDU Coalition had championed, at least in rhetoric. The appointment of the former FDP General Secretary Horst Niebel as development minister is very much in line with this. Before the election, Niebel had advocated the dissolution of the development ministry...
Non-governmental organisations in France, Austria, Sweden and other EU countries report a growing trend towards the instrumentalisation of development cooperation. This is taking various forms. When the present Finnish Government took office in 2007, its first statement was that development cooperation should serve to open up new investment markets for Finnish companies. The consequence was a resetting of priorities whereby education and health have now been replaced with forest management, water and energy as the primary focuses. These are the traditional economic sectors in which Finnish companies are internationally very strong.
At present, countries like Belgium and the United Kingdom are commendable exceptions. Their development cooperation continues to be largely oriented towards poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Where should development policy go?

At the EU level, there is a visible trend towards instrumentalisation in discussions of development policy within the new institutional structure. EU foreign policy structures are to be reformed under the Lisbon reform treaty that took effect on 1 December. At the core is a common European External Action Service intended to unify the various tracks of EU foreign policy and which is to be staffed equally with diplomatic personnel from Member States as well as officers from the Council Secretariat and from the EU Commission. Security and foreign policy are to be brought together in the External Action Service and placed under the leadership of the new EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton.
Whilst trade policy remains in the hands of the EU Commission, it is not clear what will become of development policy. Will it remain within the remit of the Commission or the EU Commissioner for Development (which would be a good thing, as that would reinforce it as a separate policy area), or will it be merged into the new diplomatic service? Advocates of this idea argue that the merging of security, foreign and development policy under a single roof could strengthen development policy coherence. A look at the current priorities of EU Member States raises doubts about this, however.
The signs point more clearly towards a conflict of interests between foreign and security policies (which represent EU interests in the world) and development cooperation (which should be guided by the needs and interests of developing countries) at the expense of the latter. Mixing diplomacy and development policy should therefore be avoided at all costs – including at the institutional level.

Weakening of coherence

A trend towards the instrumentalisation of development aid can also be recognized in the «Whole-of-the-Union» approach recently tabled by the EU Commission.  At the initiative of Italy, the EU has developed an ODA-plus concept under that approach, which no longer includes just official funding for development cooperation but all financial flows from Europe towards the South with development potential. Also included therefore are private investments, remittances by migrants and technology transfer. The move could water down the criteria used to define ODA and undermine the focus on poverty reduction and sustainable development.
The weakening of the concept of coherence proposed under the «Whole-of-the-Union» approach is oriented along similar lines. The EU Commission proposes that the number of policy areas and topics to be measured against the policy coherence for development yardstick should be reduced from 12 to five. Climate policy, food security, migration, technology transfer/patents and security are still present. Developmentally just as important areas such as trade, energy, agriculture and bilateral fisheries agreements, however, have been left out.

Verena Winkler is Policy Adviser to Eurostep, the independent European NGO network of which Alliance Sud is a member.
www.eurostep.org

Article published in: Alliance Sud News No.  62, Winter 2009/10