<http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/presentations/petitpierre.html>
°°° Abstract: It is important to leave open discussion on the topic 3.3, "Procedures and Practices". To know if one really agrees, it is necessary to be able to descend in details of how to do things. It would be important to gather opinions on instruments such as co-financing NGOs and "indirect" aids of food security, and on the improvements that it would be possible to bring to them. °°°
I think that it is important to leave open discussion on the topic 3.3, "Procedures and Practices", for the following reasons:
* It is a strong topic of the basic document, it was discussed often during the seminar, the contribution of M., Michel ROCARD on this Forum, confirms his expectation on this subject
* By suppressing it one risks to remain in the field of the theoretical, the one of policies and strategies. However, one can agree on the general ideas, while being opposed on the appropriate operating methods.
To know if one really agrees, it is necessary to be able to descend in details of how to do things: Who is responsible for what (the institutional setups)? According to what type of contract ensuing what procedure? Who exercises the control, when, how? Certainly, it is not easy to descend in the concrete, but one always can, from examples experienced, to say what has worked or what hasn't worked, what one would wish or what it would be necessary to improve.
* The Commission already has a whole range of instruments that makes possible for it to address other development actors than the State and its services. Certainly, being about Lome, it is necessary to have the agreement of the state, but experiences concerning micro-projects are numerous. More rare and more recent are those relative to the support to democratization, to decentralized cooperation.
But outside of the Lome Convention (on the Budget of the Commission), experiences are also multiple: co-financing NGOs, "indirect" aid to food aid and to food security for example. It would be interesting to gather opinions on these various instruments and on the improvements that it would be possible to bring to them. It is important because considerations are undertaken on decentralized cooperation, in the framework of negotiations in progress for the next convention.
* As an example: one of the first foreseeable improvements would be already that the information relative to funding commitments on these various instruments, for a same country, are centralized somewhere and more easily accessible, as much at the level of the headquarters of the Commission as at the one of Delegations.
* Similarly, it would be desirable that in every Delegation, a Counselor centralizes and is possibly responsible, in a cross-sector way, for all actions conducted directly with actors of the civil society, whatever is the instrument that ensures the financing of it. He would be among others responsible for the coordination and of the consistency of these various actions, not only with each other, but also with those of States Members and possibly of other financial backers. He would be also in charge of the communication and the organization of exchanges with said actors and their dialogue with the administration.
