De lovede midler fra EUs medlemstater til nødhjælpsagenturet ECHO er endnu ikke leveret i den nye budget-ramme for 2014-2020, og ECHO befinder sig derfor i store likviditetsproblemer. Hele 400 millioner euro (henved tre milliarder kr.) skal findes snarest for at undgå en dyb krise.
Det fremgår af den EU-rettede NGO, Concord Danmarks, website fredag.
Concord Danmark henviser til nyhedstjenesten EurActiv.com, som skriver:
The EU is the world’s biggest aid donor, providing over 50 per cent of the world’s humanitarian assistance through international groups such as the Red Cross/Crescent, UN agencies, and NGOs.
With relief missions from Haiti to Colombia, polls have consistently shown humanitarian aid to be the EU’s most popular mission.
Mangler det halve af budgettet
A funding shortfall of around half of the EU’s annual humanitarian aid budget will axe life-saving NGO projects and trigger global job losses in July, unless urgent action is taken by politicians of the 28-country bloc, senior officials have told EurActiv.
The aid crunch is the result of a gap between the sums that EU member states’ pledged for aid operations in ‘commitment credits’ and what they have so far delivered, under a new 2014-2020 EU budget framework insisted on by countries.
“The situation has become critical,” said Walter Schwarzenbrunner, the resources director of the EU’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection directorate (DG Echo).
“We need to find a way to get institutional reinforcement of 400 million euro – with 150 million euro before the summer – to avoid a real crisis.” Additional revenue shortfalls would take the final budget deficit (underskud) to 480 million, he said.
So far, DG Echo has tried to limit the effect of the funding gap by prioritising core operations and postponing new payments to small NGO operations in regions including the drought-prone Sahel in Sub-Saharan African, as well as parts of Asia and South America.
But the Union’s capacity for responding to humanitarian crises has been limited in 2014, Schwarzenbrunner said, even if he still hoped that the Commission would yet bring forward new proposals in late May.
Kan blive liv eller død i juli
Asked whether life-or-death aid delivery would be axed in July otherwise, he replied:
“This would definitely be the consequence. I cannot deny it. We have prioritized crucial life-saving operations at least to a certain extent, but we will run out of the possibility of continuing these under a variety of scenarios that could materialize.”
Without the replenishment (opfyldning) of DG ECHO funds, even core funding in areas such as Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic could be affected, he said.
Other EU officials confirmed that, in the event of a humanitarian crisis, the directorate “would promise less than they would in normal circumstances”.
Job-tab
Any shortfall in funding for programmes after July will also be accompanied by job losses.
“We operate to a greater extent than other parts of the Commission using short-term external staff, and of course their contracts and jobs depend on the relevance of the action behind it,” Schwarzenbrunner told EurActiv, adding:
“At the end of the day, if no action is financed, it calls into question the pertinence of keeping people there on those contracts.”
The decision by senior officials to speak out may reflect real anxiety at the scale of the cutbacks that may follow a payment credits crunch in the summer.
“I am sure DG Echo will try to manage the situation,” another EU source told EurActiv, “but if you have to reduce staff, you lose your possibility to react to a crisis.”
Humanitarian aid is different to other forms of EU spending in that it is relatively short-lived – projects typically last between 12-18 months – and it often has to be deployed immediately to be effective, as in the case with famines or floods, for example.
Problemerne tårner sig op (Grave Concerns)
Læs videre på
http://www.euractiv.com/development-policy/eu-aid-operations-hit-shock-400-news-534198
Mere om ECHO på http://ec.europa.eu/echo/index_en.htm
