Inter Press Service - October 11, 2003
Jacklynne Hobbs

She believes that the meeting could play a part in building support for changes to Europe's maligned agricultural policies, and for the need to meet the Millennium Goals.

The debate about agricultural subsidies has received extensive coverage. Nonetheless, Herfkens says there are parts of Europe that kept their distance from the controversy -- weakening the hand of activists who were pressing for change.

"In Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom there is a lot of awareness," she says, "because Oxfam and other non-governmental organisations have been raising these issues: the need to reform our agricultural policies in order to stop destroying the livelihoods of poor farmers. That debate was actually hardly going on in the rest of Europe."

Herfkens sees the Peoples' Assembly as a step towards infusing "the rest of Europe" with a more reformist spirit. "This event and conferences around this... will create public awareness [in Italy and other countries] that will bring on board governments in Southern Europe, to understand that this has to change: that there is a constituency in their own countries that wants to have a serious debate about this trade-off."

Europe's position on agriculture has come under renewed attack since the failed trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, in September. Negotiators for the EU refused to make significant reductions to the subsidies that disadvantage farmers in poor countries. This led to a standoff with developing nations under the leadership of Brazil, China and India.

Discussions on EU agriculture are a matter of keen interest for Herfkens, as they directly affect efforts to implement the millennium development goal (MDG) that calls for fairer trade, debt relief and the like. All in all, there are eight MDGs. These include pledges to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, and to reduce the mortality rate of children under five by two thirds, within the same period.

Significant funding will be needed if the goals are to be reached, however. One study puts the amount at between 40 to 70 billion dollars of extra development aid per year.

With little relief in sight as far as the reconstruction of Iraq is concerned, Herfkens says she fears that the needs of this country may crowd out appeals from other developing states.

"In terms of Europe as a donor, I have no reason to believe that... billions of European money will be side-tracked. But I'm not sure about the commitments of the United States government."

At present, the Millennium Challenge Account -- an initiative to increase U.S. development assistance by 50 per cent, come 2006 -- is still making its way through Congresss. The account would bring total U.S. aid to 15 billion dollars in 2006. U.S. lawmakers are also scrutinising President George W. Bush's pledge of 10 billion dollars in new funding to combat AIDS.

"Neither of these two amounts have been fully appropriated by the U.S. congress, and it remains to be seen whether this will be the case. But, there are strong non-governmental organisations in the U.S. lobbying for this. So, let's not give up," says Herfkens.

Simon Stocker, director of Eurostep (European Solidarity Towards Equal Participation of People), is also an observer of the progress being made with MDGs.

Stocker, who is in Perugia to attend the U.N. Peoples' Assembly, told IPS that he had noted a sustained interest in the MDGs on the part of Brussels. He does have concerns about the future of development funding. But, these fears relate to something entirely different: the fact that the EU's draft constitution appears to subordinate aid to foreign and security policy.

"What you get at the moment is a very strong move towards combating terrorism as a policy, controlling migration, actions against the drugs trade. One of the proposals in the draft constitution, in the explanatory notes, was that political policy -- defence policy -- should use assets, including development instruments, for the implementation of those structures."

This, says Stocker, could cloud the judgement of politicians when it comes to assigning aid funds.

"If you don't sort out the tools and the institutions, and clear up definitions of when development policy predominates over foreign policy," then inevitably politics that tends to be predominant, he said. (END/IPS/WD-EU/DV-IF/JH/03)

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