Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-14-Speech-3-542-000"
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"en.20111214.33.3-542-000"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, are there 111 774 or 125 218 officers serving in Afghanistan’s national police force? This question remains to be answered. That is one of the problems that we encounter when we examine the issue of the use of EU aid in Afghanistan. This question is not inconsequential, as the salaries of the Afghan police officers are paid through the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), which was set up by the United Nations Development Programme. LOTFA is the largest recipient of financial aid in Afghanistan.
We do not know how many police officers there are because the databases of the Afghan police force are unreliable. Up to now, the European Union has provided funds to Afghanistan via three different channels. There is the use of private contracting partners which fulfil contracts issued by the European Commission. There are non-governmental organisations and there are the multi-donor trust funds, the largest being maintained by the United Nations, and there is another important one that was set up by the World Bank for the development of Afghanistan. These are the channels through which the European Union’s projects in Afghanistan, which must meet a number of criteria, are financed. They are to ensure the visibility of the European Union in Afghanistan. They are to support capacity building in the public administration. They must not be vulnerable to corruption. They must be sustainable. They are to be aligned with the regional priorities, but also with the priorities of the government. If we examine the strengths and weaknesses of the channels through which we transfer funds to Afghanistan, then we see that not all of the criteria can be met via any one channel, but that each of the different channels that the European Union uses to transfer funds to Afghanistan has its own particular strengths, but also its own particular risks.
Two of the important objectives, namely, capacity building in the public administration and alignment with the priorities of the government, cannot be met at all via the channels used up to now. In my report, I therefore propose that we use a fourth channel, one that is now used for Afghanistan by many donors in the international community although not as yet by the European Union, and that is the channel of direct budget support to the Afghan state.
This direct support to the Afghan budget brings with it a number of problems. One of these became very clear in media reports when it was found that cash – dollars in this case – was immediately being taken out of Afghanistan by the box-load, and I am pleased to be able to say at this point that, if these boxes contained any European funds at all, it would have only been a very small amount. With their direct budget support, the Americans had to learn a very expensive lesson in using this channel. However, they have learnt that lesson. They are proceeding step by step. They are taking it department by department of the Afghan ministries and ensuring that certain criteria are met, namely, that management and control systems are employed, that there are mechanisms for combating corruption in place, and that accountability to the Afghan Parliament is ensured. I believe that if the European Commission were to follow the same path, that is to say, take a step-wise approach, set clear goals for the Afghan Government that are retrievable and possible to monitor, ensure that there is accountability to the Afghan Parliament and – I believe this is very important – a truly independent Afghan court of auditors, then we can also support the use of this channel.
After the withdrawal of the military, there will be a greater need for civilian aid. We must therefore ensure that this aid functions in a targeted, effective and sustainable way and that the funds provided by the European Union are protected against corruption and waste. That is in the best interests not only of European taxpayers, but of Afghanistan, too."@en1
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