Tag: EU aid

  • EU squanders £100m on train line in Turkey

    EU squanders £100m on train line in Turkey

    BRUSSELS bureaucrats have handed more than £100million to Turkey to build a high-speed rail link – in case the country joins the EU.

    There will be no return on investment from the railway for Brussels
    There will be no return on investment from the railway for Brussels

    The staggering sum does not have to be paid back and there will be no return on the investment.

    The cash is from a £12.1billion fund to support nations hoping to join the EU to which Britain contributes £120million a year.

    News of the money for the rail link between Turkey’s two biggest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, provoked outrage last night.

    Tory MP Douglas Carswell labelled the EU’s decision “bizarre”.

    He said: “Other countries that have given money to Turkey, such as China, expect a return on their capital.

    “It is funny how a communist country understands the fundamental principal of capitalism while the EU elite are giving money to Turkey without looking for a return on their investment.”

    Euro MP William Dartmouth, Ukip’s trade spokesman, called for an end to funding for countries awaiting membership.

    He said: “I cannot see how this project would really benefit the EU. The fact that British taxpayers’ money is going towards funding a new railway line in Turkey when our Government is forcing huge cuts on services and infrastructure at home will no doubt appal many people.”

    Work on the 331-mile high-speed train line began in 2003. The EU’s European Investment Bank has so far ploughed £1billion into the project in loans on top of the £100million grant.

    Other countries that have given money to Turkey such as China expect a return on their capital.

    Tory MP Douglas Carswell

    EU official Jean-Christophe Filori defended handing over the sums, saying the line will help European businessmen get to Ankara quickly to sign contracts.

    But public appetite in Turkey for joining the EU is waning and last night one of their senior officials warned they would not wait forever.

    Turkey’s chief negotiator on EU accession Egemen Bagis said his country was committed to joining the 27-member bloc but admitted they were not in favour of adopting the euro currency – despite it being a condition for entry.

    Mr Bagis touted Turkey’s sway in the Middle East as a major boon for Europe should it be allowed to join the EU.

    via EU squanders £100m on train line in Turkey | World | News | Daily Express.

  • As EU pares budgets, Turkey and Korea step up aid spending

    As EU pares budgets, Turkey and Korea step up aid spending

    Aid slips down priority list for cash-strapped traditional donor countries, but emerging powers say they can afford to help

    • EurActive, part of the Guardian development network
    • guardian.co.uk,
    MDG---Turkish-Prime-Minis-008

    The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, and his wife, Emine Erdogan, hold children during a visit to a refugee camp in Mogadishu, Somalia, in August 2011. Photograph: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP

    Turkey and South Korea, nations that have watched their own fortunes surge in a generation, are ramping up aid programmes for poor nations at a time when such spending in Europe is under threat, a EurActiv analysis of aid statistics shows.

    EU candidate Turkey and South Korea are among a handful of nations that are giving more to help poor countries at a time when the traditional heavy-hitters – the EU, Japan and the US – are struggling with domestic budgetary problems and are scaling back their overseas commitments.

    EU leaders meeting in Brussels this week are to consider austerity measures that could reduce the EU’s foreign aid spending by 11% in the 2014-2020 budget, while several EU nations are likely to miss their aid commitments to disadvantaged nations.

    Sylvia Tiryaki, the vice-chairwoman of Istanbul Kültür University’s international relations department, said Turkey was increasingly active in overseas development not just through foreign aid, but via non-governmental and charity organisations.

    “One of the reasons is that Turkey itself is becoming richer and the economic situation here is much better than it is in other countries, so we can afford it,” Tiryaki said in an interview from Ankara.

    Turkey’s help to Egypt following the Arab spring, as well as in fragile Somalia, has been designed to bring political and economic stability in regions close to Turkey, because “poverty breeds radicalism”, she said.

    Budget increases

    South Korea almost tripled its spending from 2006 to 2011, easily outpacing any other donor country, while Turkey nearly doubled its overseas aid budget in the same period. Their status as emerging donors follows significant economic growth in the post-cold war period and the countries’ rise as regional economic and political powers.

    Michael Ward, a senior policy analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED), said South Korea’s expanding aid budget stems not just from from its economic might and regional interests, but appreciation for the aid it received in the decades after its devastating civil war in the early 1950s.

    “There is a strong feeling in Korea, certainly within the government, that Korea benefited hugely as country from aid after the civil war,” Ward said by telephone from OECD’s headquarters in Paris. “The older generation there remembers Korea being poor and the role that international assistance played.”

    Turkey faces criticism

    Nevertheless, the two emerging donors are still a long way from joining the big league, data from the OECD and development monitoring groups show.

    South Korea provided $1.33bn in overseas aid and Turkey $1.3bn in 2011, out of a world total of $125.1bn.

    When measured by gross national income (GNI), aid accounted for 0.12% of South Korea’s GNI in 2011, falling short of its 0.13% target, and 0.13% of Turkey’s GNI. Overall, the 24 member countries of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) allocated 0.31% of GNI to foreign aid, and the EU’s 2015 target is 0.7%.

    Historically, Turkey has used its foreign aid to support mainly Islamic countries – and nations with historic links to its Ottoman past – in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Balkans. However, the Turkish Co-operation and Co-ordination Agency began expanding its reach to Africa, including Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia, in 2003. It has also led relief efforts to Haiti since the earthquake there in 2010.

    But Turkey has come under fire for spending money overseas while it is still a major recipient of EU and international development assistance.

    In a blistering report on EU aid, the British parliament’s International Development Committee noted that sending money to a “relatively rich” country like Turkey undermined efforts to help impoverished nations.

    “It is unacceptable that only 46% of aid disbursed through European institutions goes to low-income countries. It devalues the concept of aid when so much of what is defined as Official Development Assistance (ODA) goes to relatively rich countries such as Turkey,” said the report, which was released in April 2012.

    The Berlin-based European Stability Initiative estimates that EU pre-accession funding – including rural and regional development – for Turkey amounted to €899.5m (£777.8m) in 2012, nearly double the level in 2007. Turkey was the 20th largest development aid recipient in 2010, receiving $1.1bn, OECD and World Bank data show.

    Tiryaki, who is also deputy director of the Global Political Trends Centre in Istanbul, dismisses criticism of Turkey’s joint roles as aid recipient and donor. Turkey’s foreign assistance reflects the country’s Islamic “understanding of providing help to the poor”, she said. “You have to give a part of your earnings, a part of your income, to those who don’t have anything.”

    Reforms urged in South Korea

    Unlike Turkey, South Korea is not an aid recipient. But the OECD, in a report issued last month, urged the country to revamp its aid programme, including the KOICA development agency, to improve co-operation with other international donors and to decouple aid from contracts with South Korean companies.

    South Korea assists more than 20 nations, many of them in south-east and South Asia. The OECD report recommends it concentrate on fewer countries. “Spreading your aid across too many countries … does not go as far effectively as if you were concentrating the resources,” Ward said. “They’ve still got 26 priority countries, which for a donor of their size is just really too many.”

    In general, though, South Korea scores good marks in OECD’s checklist of aid effectiveness and in responding to recommendations made by the organisation.

    In October, South Korea’s minister of strategy and finance, Jaewan Bahk, announced the opening of a World Bank office in Korea, to find sustainable development solutions for emerging countries. At the launch, he said: “Korea is one of the few development aid recipient countries that successfully transformed to a major donor and the world’s 13th largest economy. And therefore it understands the difficulties that developing countries are facing today.

    “Korea stands ready to share the knowledge and know-how gained over the course of its development.”

  • Most EU aid ‘goes to richer nations’

    Most EU aid ‘goes to richer nations’

    More than half of Europe’s development aid budget is going to “relatively rich” countries like Turkey and Serbia, British MPs have warned.

    The committee says the UK must put pressure on Europe to reform its aid system
    The committee says the UK must put pressure on Europe to reform its aid system

    The International Development Committee said the situation “could devalue the concept of aid” and called on the UK government to demand change.

    The UK gave £1.23 billion in aid via the EU in 2010.

    But EU commissioner Andris Piebalgs said it was “not true” to suggest aid is going to the wrong people.

    International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said the EU was “already reforming the way it spends aid, making it more transparent, results-focused and targeted at the poorest people”.

    The committee reveals that only 46% of the UK contribution to EU aid for developing countries goes to low-income states – a figure it calls “unacceptable”.

    The rest, it says, goes to “middle-income” states, adding: “Turkey has consistently been in the top five recipients of European Commission aid (£182 million in 2010) as has Serbia (£178 million in 2010).”

    The MPs also criticised the administrative bill for the EU programme, pointing out they were twice as high as the Department for International Development’s own costs. The European Commission estimate administrative costs in 2009 were 5.4%.

    EU aid for Turkey this year totals 860.2m euros (£703m; $1.14bn) and for Serbia it is 202m euros. In the 2007-2013 funding period the total for countries in the queue to join the EU is 11.5bn euros.

    ‘Undermine support’

    The MPs’ committee urged the UK government to challenge the definition of official development assistance (ODA), through which the relevant EU aid is spent.

    “It appears to be being used as a way of fudging the figures to help other European countries meet the (internationally agreed) target for 0.7% of GDP to be given as aid,” chairman and Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce said.

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    If aid is not about helping the poorest then it is not worthy of the name”

    Claire Godfrey Oxfam policy adviser

    But commissioner Piebalgs said supporting developing countries was an “important part” of the EU’s work and delivered separately to those “clearly aimed at fighting poverty”.

    “I have proposed to concentrate EU aid in the future to the poorest countries in the world, to make sure our money goes to the most in need and where it makes a real difference,” the commissioner added.

    “The MPs said Mr Mitchell had argued “it would take forever and be difficult” to change the definition of ODA so as to exclude relatively wealthy countries.

    “We do not accept this: the government should be bolder and less risk averse by tackling the criteria for ODA so that more funding goes to the world’s poorest people and the poorest countries, and less to the European neighbourhood,” Mr Bruce said.

    “Failure to do this may undermine the UK public’s support for EU institutions.”

    Mr Bruce added: “British taxpayers want the aid they give to go to the places where it can make the most difference, to countries where millions of people are getting by on less than a pound a day.

    “Giving aid to relatively rich countries like Turkey could devalue the concept of aid.”

    ‘Relentless pressure’

    Oxfam policy adviser Claire Godfrey said the organisation fully supported the call for aid to be better targeted.

    “If aid is not about helping the poorest then it is not worthy of the name,” she said. “But reopening the definition of ODA is not necessary and could be counter-productive.”

    She added: “The UK government should support an increase in EU aid, which this report shows is delivering improved results.”

    Mr Mitchell backed the report’s central message, saying: “Following relentless pressure from the coalition government, the EU is already reforming the way it spends aid, making it more transparent, results-focused and targeted at the poorest people.”

    But he defended aid for Turkey, insisting: “Supporting Turkish accession to the EU has been the policy of successive British governments and is firmly in the national interest.”

    Commissioner Piebalgs said EU aid had “pulled millions of people out of poverty”, adding: “I know there are some aid sceptics who would rather see money spent elsewhere.”

    via BBC News – Most EU aid ‘goes to richer nations’ – MPs.