Launching proposals for a radical reform of the EU's foreign aid payments system, the External Relations Commissioner, Mr Chris Patten, yesterday admitted that the Union had "an appalling reputation for delivering on our promises".
Mr Patten admitted that, in the case of aid to the Union's Mediterranean neighbours, time delays of nearly nine years between commitment and cash delivery were typical. And last year, while the Union had committed some €1 billion (£788 million) to the region, it had actually disbursed only €370 million.
On average, delays between taking on commitments and payments amount to seven years for Asian projects, 6.5 for Latin America, 4.2 for South Africa, 2.5 for the Balkans, and 1.8 for food and humanitarian aid.
In the European Development Fund, the main source of aid to Africa, he said, there was a backlog of some €5 billion in outstanding commitments.
Mr Patten told the story of a minister from one of the North African Maghreb countries who had told a visiting commissioner he would not mind if there were longer gaps between commissioners' visits if only there were shorter ones between promises and delivery.
Overall, some €21 billion in commitments were still outstanding.
Mr Patten and his fellow external relations commissioners want to see the streamlining of the payments system under one EU office, Europe-Aid, under a board composed of the external relations commissioners, and the devolution of the detailed management of programmes to officials in the field and member-states.
The Commission would become primarily involved in strategic planning, and aid packages would be integrated in more coherent and consistent multi-annual programmes.
The Commission would also undertake an urgent review of some 2,000 commitments totalling over €1 billion dating back to 1995 and beyond which were still in limbo. Many were no longer active projects, he said.
Mr Patten said that the reasons for such delays had to do partly with bureaucratic rigidities and partly with the dramatic expansion of the EU's role without a corresponding increase in staff. The EU is now the largest donor of humanitarian aid in the world and in 2000 the overall level of EU external assistance, including humanitarian aid and pre-accession funding, will total some €12.3 billion, over 3 1/2 times the level 10 years ago.
Aid commitments were increasing at twice the level of staff resources to the point where for every €10 million administered, the Union had 2.9 staff to the equivalent 6.9 in the UK.
Responding to comments from the British Minister for Development, Ms Clare Short, who yesterday described the EU as "the worst aid agency in the world", Mr Patten said that she "never erred on the side of understatement" and pointed to the reality that for every pound of aid to be distributed, Ms Short had 2 1/2 times his staff.
