Legal basis: Cotonou Agreement of 2 June 2000
Duration: 2000-2005
Financial resources available: € 13.5 billion
AFRICA: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon,
Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of
Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), the Cook Islands,
Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea,
Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar,
Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger,
Nigeria, Rwanda, Saõ Tomé and Principe, Senegal,
the Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland,
Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
CARIBBEAN: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica,
the Dominican Republic, Granada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts
and Nevis, Santa Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname,
Trinidad and Tobago.
PACIFIC: Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Papua-New Guinea,
the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palo, Tonga, the Federal State
of Micronesia, Tuvalu, Vanatu, Samoa.
In 1975, the nine EEC States stipulated the first Lomé
Convention with 46 States in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific
(ACP). EEC-ACP co-operation, based on the principles of equality
among the States and of respect and recognition of national sovereignty
and of reciprocal interest, was confirmed by subsequent renewals
of the Convention every five years.
The five pillars of the new partnership established at Cotonou
are:
• a comprehensive political dimension,
• participatory approaches,
• a strengthened focus on poverty reduction,
• a new framework for economic and trade co-operation,
• a reform of financial co-operation.
The principal financial instrument for implementation of the
Cotonou Agreement (as previously for the Lomé Convention)
is the European Development Fund (EDF), which is financed with
contributions from EU Member States and managed outside the Community
budget.
The EDF provides for four types of subsidy:
- programmed aid: used in regional-co-operation programmes and
Indicative National Programmes (the documents that identify, for
each ACP State, the prioritised sectors, the project guidelines
for social, economic and cultural promotion and, finally, the
amount of financial resources available for allocation);
- Non-programmed aid: guaranteed to specific ACP countries, this
financing is intended to stabilise export earnings, through STABEX
for agriculture products and through SYSMIN for mineral products;
- financing in the form of risk capital, to promote and develop
public and private SMEs;
- emergency humanitarian aid and refugee aid.
The programme is intended to promote and accelerate economic,
social and cultural development in the ACP States, contributing
to peace and security, with the ultimate goal of eradicating poverty.
Specific objectives are:
- to support rapid, sustainable economic growth that increases
employment;
- to promote private-sector development;
- to improve access to production resources and economic activities;
- to promote regional co-operation and integration;
- to promote human and social development and gender equality
and to contribute to ensuring that everyone is able to enjoy the
benefits of development
- to promote the Community's cultural values and their specific
interaction with economic, political and social components;
- to support the reform and development of institutions, to strengthen
the major institutions in order to consolidate democracy and good
government and to develop an efficient and competitive market
economy;
- to promote sustainability, to ensure the conservation of natural
resources, the regeneration of the environment and the spread
of best practices in the environmental field.
In all sectors of co-operation with ACP countries, consideration
is given to particularly vital issues that may also become the
focus for specific actions and programmes, such as:
- economic development;
- human and social development;
- regional co-operation and integration;
- horizontal questions and themes.
The Cotonou Convention established new implementation procedures
for the specific commercial agreements (economic-partnership agreements)
that concern:
1) the process of liberalisation of the less-developed ACP countries'
major products before 2005;
2) the market-liberalisation process will be launched in 2008
and last for a transition period of twelve years.
The agreements take effect on 1 January 2008.
The beneficiaries of the financing made available by the Agreement
are: the ACP States (at the local, national and regional levels),
non-institutional players, the private sector, economic and social
partners (including union organisations) and civil society in
all its forms, according to particular national situations.
After the Cotonou Convention was ratified, each State was assigned
an aid budget for the financing of different kinds of activity,
without specific sectors being identified. Moreover, each ACP
country must identify the regions that require financial intervention
by means of Regional Programmes. Projects are financed by means
of non-repayable subsidies, private loans and risk capital. The
procedures used to allocate financing are managed directly by
the EU delegations in the ACP countries, according to a particularly
decentralised approach.
The support provided by the Lomé/Cotonou Convention also
covers subsidies for projects presented by European NGOs, the
funds being taken from the budget for decentralised co-operation.
Further information is available at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/country/country_en.cfm
