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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

For once, I am at a loss to find a reason to disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I think he is absolutely right. His right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) mentioned corruption in the common agricultural policy. We must root out corruption: there should be no place for it in Europe, or in any other area where we are doing business or providing support. Regardless of the current institutional arrangements in Europe, the Liberal Democrats believe in the principles of co-operation and multilateralism in international affairs, including international development. Beyond those principles, there are many practical aspects to recognise. As our development partners make clear, they also demand that donors place greater emphasis on cohesion, efficiency and effectiveness. That provides both an opportunity and a series of challenges for the European Union. As the world's largest economy, comprising some of the world's richest nations, the EU has a number of obligations: not only to help the development of the extremely poor countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, many of which were once part of Europe's empires, but to establish international structures to tackle the causes of poverty, be they conflict, climate catastrophe or, as the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) suggested, corruption. To a large extent European countries, acting alone or together through the European Union, have accepted those obligations. EU members collectively are now the world's largest international donors, accounting for more than half the world's total official development assistance. As is shown by figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Community's development assistance is larger than that of the World Bank, and several times larger than that of the United Nations Development Programme. The EU has played a leading role in the stepping up of the international community's contribution on development. The agreement reached at the General Affairs and External Relations Council in May 2005, when the EU pledged to reach the international target of a contribution of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income to development by 2015, was a milestone. It provided a real impetus ahead of the G8 summit at Gleneagles later in the year, which made impressive commitments to increase aid to Africa by $25 billion per year by 2010, to increase aid to all developing countries by $50 billion per year by 2010, and to cancel 100 per cent. of debts for eligible countries. The EU's member states and institutions are central to the delivery of a large part of that agenda. The EU's unique position in bringing together 27 nations offers a unique chance to introduce co-ordination and coherence to development policy across Europe, although the process is not without difficulties. Strenuous efforts have been made in recent years, resulting in the adoption of the European consensus on development in 2005 and that of the European consensus on humanitarian aid, which set out the principles, aims and criteria on the basis of which the EU and all its member states will pursue international development. The fact that priority has been given to tackling poverty in the least developed countries represents a breakthrough, and that has now been incorporated in the Lisbon treaty. In its 2007 review, the OECD highlighted the positive reforms of recent years. It has reported:"““The adoption of the European Consensus has been a major strategic success””." It has also argued that"““the community should continue to be a driving force for encouraging progress towards the agreed targets””," but the EU's current development structure is often complicated and confusing, and it is not short of critics. Indeed, the European institutions have a well-established reputation for bureaucratic complexity. The OECD has highlighted the eternal tussle between control and oversight on the one hand and proper authority and appropriate decentralisation on the other. Its most recent report again expresses concern about attempts at micro-management and has recommended that"““the community should give more say to the delegations in prioritising and applying the thematic programmes in country.””" There are clearly important challenges here. Unlike the common foreign and security policy, the Lisbon treaty does not make substantial changes to the Union's development structures, but it does make a key change in refocusing the Union's development policy on the primary objective of the reduction and eradication of poverty. We join the Government and development non-governmental organisations in welcoming that change.