EU ACP > Forum > Summaries > Summary 7 (03/07-9/07)

Summaries of the debates on the forum

Summary 6 (26 June - 2 July)

FOLLOWING IS A MACHINE TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL IN FRENCH. IT HAS BEEN EDITED FOR MISTRANSLATION ONLY. THE ORIGINAL IN FRENCH IS AVAILABLE ON THIS WEB SITE AT: <http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/syntheses/synt6.html>

KEY WORDS: PROGRESS OF THE DEBATE

* * Title: Summary 6 - Cooperation practices, new tools and intermediation, institutional reorganization and ACP groups, territory, scale of contribution, recognizing responsibilities of the political class - (26 June - 2 July) * *
by: Anne SIMON <anne.simon@skynet.be>
<http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/presentations/simon.html>
ААА Abstract: The discussion on the project aid and the support to the process turned this week around the role of mediators, of the failure of giving responsibility linked to the aid project, of the advantage of the specific support, the need and the existence of new practical approaches (and instruments). On the institutional level, the ACP group pleads for a consistency between reform and the common and negotiated nature of the Convention of Lomщ. An intervening party proposes the territory as scale of contribution. To modify cooperation, partners need to acknowledge their responsibilities in failures of cooperation as well as the current impact of the policies of decentralization or support to governance. Recognize the traditional balances that have been destroyed in order to rehabilitate them? ААА

1. Transformations of practices and procedures
- 1.1 Practices of cooperation: Mediators and tools
To support the local initiatives more directly is it necessary to invent new tools making possible to move to the support of processes? Or would it not be preferable to continue with a specific aid limited in time? What role for mediators?
Etienne Tassщ wonders about practices of cooperation. He tells how "recipients" of a district of Douala have refused a project that didn't correspond to their desires. Then how he understood that projects are more easily financed if they are presented by mediators than by populations of districts. He asks if it would not be possible that the "local groups", by going directly to Delegations of the EC in the country, obtain support to the businesses that they have started up. More generally, it would be desirable " that procedures and practices are simpler, more direct and more transparent " to place actors " in the center of all the process ".
Does not moving from a " project logic" (short term) to a " process logic" (long term), carry the risk of increasing the dependence, the feeling of helplessness? It is the question posed by Aliou Sall. Indeed, if this is a type of support still decided from the outside, if it substitutes local capacities over a long period of time, what more will be brought by "support to processes"? Is not a " specific support" less dangerous?
On the contrary, Lucy Attipka appraises that the " project " approach - too specific - is " very limited", that " all is defined ahead of time", which sometimes prevents the beneficiary to enter into it. The development needs today sustainable actions and it is necessary to come out of the era of assistance. She mentions the experience of her organization that uses " a project " to help to back the capacities of the professional organizations of fishing so that they can themselves take their own responsibilities. The "project" tool should not necessarily be suppressed but it must serve to undertake a process. It would be necessary to also multiply exchanges between partners. This communication encourages initiative and mobilization. Having experience it, she recognizes that this change of approach will be long and difficult, it requires a change of mentality on the part of recipients and on the part of financial backers and that it is necessary to mobilize in this direction.
Anne Simon recalls that intermediation is a structural need of the big systems of cooperation. To give back their position to actors in processes of cooperation requires a long transformation of practices, that rests on the double challenge: of the intermediation, unavoidable today according to her, and of limits of the project aid. This project aid that one can adapt and transform if all intervening parties took the means to do it.
- 1.2 EU-ACP agreements: Is it necessary to preserve the institutional relations and a specific management within external relations of the EU?
The composition of the new European Commission is still unknown. Reorganizations took place in the external relations services: A common service of management of the aid to third countries (SCR) is henceforth in charge of the management and the follow-up of actions led in all zones of the world. The service that was the traditional and privileged interlocutor of the ACP, the DGVIII, kept the responsibility of the definition of policies and programs. Carl Greenidge, Joint Secretary General of the ACP Secretariat, exposes these reorganizations, and is himself concerned that this separation of services that seems " to complicate things " further and could risk compromising the privileged relations between the DGVIII and the ACP Group.
He pleads so that, in reforms to come, the ACP should have a single partner service for the political dialogue and the programming, and another partner for the implementation of projects and programs. On the political level, a Commissioner specifically in charge of ACP countries should be maintained in the next Commission. Carl Greenidge thinks that it is necessary to imagine a management mechanism consistent with the significance of the negotiated and joint nature of the Lomщ partnership.
- 1.3 The territory the most relevant development echelon?
In echo to discussions of last week on decentralization and regionalization (local level and regional level), Severine Bellina raises the question to know what is the relevant development echelon. She thinks that all echelons are necessary, and that it is preferable to consider territories as places of implementation of a policy, of a project... The territory can then be located at different scales, it is constituted by the human dynamics (networks), regulation systems. It is at the level of the territory that the population finds " a place in which to express itself, to act " and that concepts of citizenship and governance find their meaning. A place for the development? Djibril Diop goes in the same direction. From the point of view of a mobilization beyond the village framework which prevails in actions of development, he currently studies the territorial scales that privilege the local actors.
2. Discussions on responsibilities facing the failures or the deviant effects of development policies (decentralization, governance)
To hope to arrive to the EU-ACP cooperation agreements "more responsible and transparent", it is first necessary that each side recognizes their part of responsibility. Djibril Diop explains that, even though the ACP countries are greatly responsible of their situation - and must accept this - Europe must recognize that it was not neutral, and that it backed the system by remaining silent with regard to the lack of transparency. This stage is necessary to change the line of cooperation radically.
Aliou Sall raises the question of the responsibility of the current cooperation policies, such as the support to decentralization and to good governance, of the destruction of the traditional democratic balances and the fragilization of progress in the broad sense. In the case of decentralization, he describes the loss of bargaining power of the villages, the power of proximity sanction that is given to elected representatives. The Central States sometimes play an ambiguous role in processes of decentralization, possibly through their decentralized structures. The "excessive" power of States has destroyed the other forms of powers, of regulation, and the balance that existed between the traditional institutions (example of the three powers of the Lebou society in Senegal).
In these conditions, what position to give to States in programs of "support to good governance"? He answers the concerns expressed last week: " good governance is rather an endangered tradition to be rehabilitated".

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