Wanted: watchdog help for new EU states

Wanted: watchdog help for new EU states

By Dick Leonard

THEY knew about the problem in ancient Rome. "Who will guard the guardians?" asked Juvenal, and the question has been reiterated by representatives of 180 civil society organizations in central and eastern Europe, as their governments prepare for accession to the European Union.

They are concerned that the essential watchdog function which they fulfil in their new and still fragile democracies will be put at risk as the financial help they have been receiving from the West begins to dry up. Much of this has come from private donors, but the EU itself is ending its democracy programme, and the governments of the US, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland have all cut off the funds they had been providing.

The new member states will, of course, be eligible for substantial help from the EU's structural funds, and much of this will be channelled through non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

But this is earmarked for social and economic purposes: none of it will be available for ensuring good governance - monitoring human rights, the treatment of minorities such as the Roma gypsies, the independence of the judiciary, exposing corruption and maintaining essential checks and balances in the political system.

According to Pawel Krzeczunowicz, director of the Brussels office of Polish NGOs, at least 75% of the budget of watchdog bodies in Hungary has been provided from western sources. He has no comparable data for other countries acceding to the EU, including his own, but believes that the position in all of them is roughly similar.

If no alternative funding is forthcoming, he says, "it will leave a vacuum", and the continuing work of the organizations will be placed in severe jeopardy.

Some western bodies continue to contribute, such as the Open Society Institute of George Soros. It supports the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland, two of whose current activities are monitoring the control of Poland's eastern borders to check how travellers are treated, and a study of how public funds are allocated to NGOs.

Another western-backed agency still active is the Trust for Civil Society, but for the most part such bodies are shutting up shop.

The European Commission, for example, made substantial sums available to help the candidate countries meet the 'Copenhagen criteria' of being stable, pluralistic democracies. Once they had been certified as such, it had no mandate to continue. The new entrants are now regarded as being in the same category as the existing member states.

Ideally, they should be in a position to finance watchdog activities in the same way - through voluntary contributions by their own citizens to charitable and crusading organizations. Yet - partly because of the long years of Communist rule - there is no tradition of charitable giving or voluntary public service in these countries, and it will probably be many years before they catch up.

The first person to sound an alarm bell about the approaching financial crisis was the Polish lawyer, Professor Wiktor Osiatynski. In response to a lecture which he gave earlier this year, at the Central European University in Budapest, civil society groups in 11 countries, including Turkey, launched an appeal in June for the creation by the EU of a Good Governance and Civil Society Fund.

The fund, they propose, should provide support for monitoring activities in accession countries from 2004 for a period of 5-10 years. It should be allocated through a transparent annual grant competition with clearly identified priorities and procedural guidelines. The European Commission, they say, should have the task of evaluating grant applications and selecting the best proposals.

The support offered by the fund would not only provide financial means for watchdog groups, they say, but would also send a message to both governments and public that good governance requires independent monitoring activities.

Slovakia's Prime Minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, has written to Commission President Romano Prodi strongly backing the appeal, and it now looks as though a positive response will come from the European Parliament. A group of MEPs has tabled a motion to establish such a fund, due to be considered by Parliament's Budgetary Committee next week.

It stands a good chance of success, as it is supported by members of the four largest groups in the Parliament - Glyn Ford (Socialist), Arie Oostlander and José Salafranca (European People's Party), Bob van den Bos (Liberal) and Gianfranco Dell'Alba (Radical) and Matti Wuori (Greens), as well as by Emma Bonino, leader of the small unofficial group of Italian Radicals. Their motion stipulates that recipients of the fund should be NGOs working in the following fields:

* Human rights;

* public interest law (for example, fostering NGO laws, and addressing unlawful practices by state authorities);

* good governance at central and local level (including respect for citizens' rights and administrative transparency);

* independence of the civil service, and;

* anti-corruption.

The motion specifies that the fund should continue for a minimum of three years, and that an appropriation of l5 million should be made in the budget for 2004. Not a huge amount, I suggested to Mr Krzeczunowicz, for the large number of organizations active in the 11 countries which launched the appeal.

He replied that these groups were used to operating on shoe-string budgets, and that the important point was the setting of the precedent rather than the amount involved. He and his associates will be delighted if Parliament accepts the motion.

One possible objection is that it is discriminatory to set up a fund which benefits some member states and not others; some of the problems of the new members are also faced by existing states.

Italy and Greece, for example, were perceived in a recent survey conducted by Transparency International as being more corrupt than some eastern European states. The solution might be to allocate a larger sum and make the fund open to watchdog organizations throughout the EU, which meet the necessary conditions.