The European Union's Development Policy

The EU Commission continued to reform its administrative and financial system, including its development cooperation structure. The European Office for Cooperation (EuropeAid) commenced operating from 1 January 2001, with simultaneous gradual "deconcentration" of functions to the Commission's delegations in the recipient countries. These will now plan and administer projects throughout their complete cycles, including coordination with the embassies and bilateral development aid offices of the EU member states in the recipient countries.

The work begun in 2000 on communicable diseases resulted in the adoption of a comprehensive action plan covering development cooperation, health, trade and research. This should provide better access to commercially available pharmaceuticals and increased financial support for research and development. At the G8 summit in Genoa in July 200, the EU Commission announced its intention to make €120m available for HIV/AIDS research in response to the appeal by the UN Special General Assembly. The European Community agreed to contribute €60m to the new Global Fund to Combat HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Health Fund) for the year 2001.

After the events of 11 September the EU Council of Ministers for Development held an informal meeting in October, when there was a consensus on the need to step up efforts to combat poverty. At its regular meeting in November, the Council requested the Commission to open a dialogue with the member states with a view to increasing their contributions to development assistance, including drawing up a specific time-scale for raising them to the OECD target of 0.7 per cent of national GDP. The Council adopted a resolution calling for more public awareness of the need for international solidarity on sustainable global development. The future EU member states are also to be included in this process.

The implementation of the Cotonou Agreement between the European Community and the African, Caribbean and Pacific states continued. The agreement and its integral financial arrangement for the Ninth European Development Fund (EDF) offer new possibilities for co-financing development programmes and projects by EU member states from Fund resources. Austria played a decisive role in negotiating these arrangements, and was one of the first member states to start negotiations with the European Commission on the co-financing of Austrian bilateral development projects from EU resources. This new form of cooperation with the Commission has opened up fresh opportunities for Austria's development cooperation.

In applying the Cotonou Agreement, recourse was taken several times to Article 96, which provides for consultations with individual ACP states (in this case Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Zimbabwe and Fiji) in the event of infringements of its essential elements. In autumn 2001 an attempt was made to achieve a normalisation of the situation in Zimbabwe by holding a general political dialogue under Article 8 of the Cotonou Agreement. Since this failed to have any effect, it was necessary to invoke the formal provisions of Article 96 at the end of the year.

The year 2001 was also marked by intensive negotiations on a new association agreement between the European Community and the overseas countries and territories linked with the member states France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Denmark. This replaced the earlier 1991 association arrangement. Austria's priorities in this connection were the general aims of development policy within the overall framework of combating poverty. Compromise solutions were found to a number of other questions of importance to Austria, including objective criteria for the granting of funds from the EDF, radioactive and other dangerous wastes, sugar quotas and certificates of origin, and measures to restrict tax oases.

The European Union and her member states are signatories of the 1999 International Food Aid Convention. The aggregate EU commitment of €422m (including transport and other operational costs) is met from the central EU budget as well as bilateral contributions from individual member states. Austria's annual commitment is almost €1.5m, which is now delivered as finance instead of cereals to that value as it was before. In the cereal year 2000/2001, Austria contributed €800,000 for Cape Verde and €689,000 for Ethiopia. Under an agreement with Cape Verde, its government is responsible for purchasing and distributing the cereals, with the proceeds from the sales being devoted to Austrian development projects there. Austria is also endeavouring to have a code of conduct for food aid inserted into the Convention.