InterPress Service
July 20, 1998Brussels - Hundreds of humanitarian aid groups and human rights NGOs are in danger of losing their funding from the European Union as the effects of a surprise legal ruling five weeks ago filter down to the grassroots level. The EU's Executive Commission immediately froze around $844 million worth of grants to NGOs working in the social policy, development and human rights field. Most is still being withheld.
The NGDOs Liaison Committee, a network of 900 European development NGOs, warned that much of the work under threat concerns some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Europe and in the developing world. The elderly, young people, migrants and refugees, people with disabilities, children, families, those who are homeless or unemployed, victims of torture or land mines are all being hit.
The aid freeze came after a ruling by the European Court of Justice that called the technical legality of the payments into doubt and concluded that the Commission had, wrongly, allocated funds to the programs without the approval of the EU's ruling Council of Ministers.
On July 15, the Commission announced it had unblocked $355 million worth of funds in 56 of the 99 budget lines which were frozen in June. Of the remaining 43, worth around $490 million, 19 have been partially cleared and 24 will either remain momentarily suspended or "cannot be implemented." But only "recipients formally identified before June 10" will receive funds from these 43 budget lines, warned the Commission. "The Commission has divided the budget lines into three categories: blocked, partially unblocked and suspended. These headings are misleading," said the Brussels-based Platform of European Social NGOs, which represents thousands of organizations from civil society. "Even unblocked lines are not safe."
"This is an exceptional measure applying to 1998 only," said a statement by the Commission. But it warned that "it should be noted that EU funding might cease in 1999 unless a legal basis (for future payments) is adopted by then".The ruling threw many of Europe's best known and most respected humanitarian, human rights and social sector NGOs into chaos. For many NGOs the cash flow problems caused by EU payment delays are almost as devastating as losing the grants completely. Organizations such as the Brussels-based Platform, programs aimed at combating violence against children and women, groups working to integrate gender issues in development cooperation, all face closure. The Brussels-based European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN), which has been attempting in the past few years to give a voice to European organizations working with those marginalized by economic development, said it was "appalled" by the decision to suspend the budget line on social exclusion.
"(EAPN's) work will now have to be drastically reduced if not stopped altogether," warned this week the EAPN, which relies on EU funds from a frozen budget line. Other NGOs say human rights defenders world wide will not be spared."The consequences of this decision are dramatic and further widen the gulf between the European Institutions statements on Human Rights and the reality," says an ad hoc coalition of rights NGOs which between them represent many hundreds of human rights organizations and activists all over the world. "In taking this action the European authorities will make the weakest in society pay for it's mistakes," warned the coalition, which includes Amnesty International EU, the International Federation of Human Rights EU, Human Rights Watch, and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT)
The consequences are already visible, says the NGO coalition. As a result of the funds freeze, Radio Umwizero, a project of a small French NGO aimed at broadcasting messages of peace and reconciliation in Burundi, has been shut down. And the OMCT warns that up to 53 centers it supports across the world, whose number of patients runs into the thousands, could be seriously affected.
Today, ministers from the 15 EU states met Commission President Jacques Santer, the EU budget Commissioner, Erkki Liikanen, and Detlev Samland, Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Budgets, to find a solution to the legal problem.
The Court of Justice ruling resulted from a case brought by the former Conservative government in the United Kingdom. It had objected to a number of projects set up to tackle social problems and social exclusion, particularly the work of NGOs in rehabilitating women forced into prostitution in Spain and Germany. The test case was backed by Germany and Denmark."The European Union needs a long-term solution, which should provide an umbrella also for the implementation of the 1998 and 1999 budgets," warned Liikanen this week.
Many feared such an agreement would not be reached today, when the ministers had been scheduled to review next years' budget. Even before the current crisis, earlier plans had included a substantial cut of more than $100 million in EU development cooperation funding in 1999 -- despite the EU's earlier plans to raise its budget overall by more than six percent on this years' figure. "Now is the time for EU leaders to show us that their famous 'People's Europe' is more than just a marketing slogan," said on behalf of the NGOs EAPN's Director Marie-Francoise Wilkinson.
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