Eurostep Seminar in Tallinn on December 4, 2003

Eurostep together with the Open Estonia Foundation and the Estonian Ministry for Foreign Affairs organised a Conference in Tallinn on European Development Policy in the context of enlargement and the Intergovernmental Conference.

Mall Hellam, executive director of the Open Estonia Foundation and Priit Kolbre, Permanent Undersecretary of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs launched the debates by welcoming a large audience to the “first meeting on EU development Policy in Estonia”. Priit Kolbre stressed the “very good co-operation taking place between the Estonian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Open Estonia Foundation and Eurostep” in the context of this meeting but also in the framework of the Intergovernmental Conference. Simon Stocker director of Eurostep thanked “Estonian civil society for its contribution to the debate on the future of Europe while hoping that this seminar was just the launch of a long term collaboration”.

A large majority of speakers recognised that the Estonian experience of a transition from recipient to donor country was a good opportunity to contribute significantly to EU’s development policy. The Finnish Director General for the Department for Development Policy, Ritva Jolkkonen, stressed the importance of partnership principles in Development Policy. Mr. Kolbre underlined the fact that partnership is a key point for Estonia as “assistance has to be honest, respect needs, be personalised … the best development policy places recipients and donors as equal partners”.

Margit Säre from the Peipsi Center for Transboundary Co-operation, illustrated the role played by the partnership principles in Estonia’s aid by giving concrete examples of development projects in which Estonian and Albanian NGOs were put as equal partners and Florent Sebban from Eurostep stressed “the importance given to the Cotonou principles of partnership, ownership and participation by New Member States representatives within the Convention on the Future of Europe”

After the Conclave meeting of the Intergovernmental Conference in Naples and before the last gathering of European Heads of States, which is set to finalise the European Constitution, many debates were centred around the European Constitution and the place of Development in this European legal framework. A large consensus emerged among participants on the fact that the development and humanitarian aid principles within the draft Treaty (artIII-218 and III-223) were satisfactory and Henrik Hololei, chief government counsellor on EU affairs confirmed that Estonia was satisfied with those articles.

However Norbert Sagstetter from the European Commission and Simon Stocker both stressed that good development and humanitarian principles would not be applicable if the new institutional structure negotiated among Heads of States and Governments within the Intergovernmental Conference was defining development and humanitarian aid as a tool for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), as proposed by the Italian presidency in its amendment suggestion for article I-27. This modification would allow the future European Foreign Minister to adapt external community policies (trade, development co-operation, humanitarian aid) to the objectives of the CFSP.

Such a change in the draft Treaty proposed by the European Convention would make the European Foreign Minister primarily accountable even when s/he was acting on community competencies. Simon Stocker declared that “this proposal would destroy the institutional balance, an important basis of the European Union, and it is contradictory to the Laeken objective of bringing the Union closer to its people”.  He concluded saying that “the outcome on this article, expected in the last meeting of the IGC on 12-13 December, is crucially important and will influence our decision on whether to accept or reject the constitution”.

For further information contact:

Annika Kool, Coordinator, Estonian Civil Society Contact Group, +3726313791 annika.kool@kontaktgrupp.ee

Simon Stocker, Director, Eurostep +32 2 231 1659 or +32 2 479 489 147

Florent Sebban, Policy Assistant +32 2 234 6227 fsebban@eurostep.org