The EU policy towards fragile states

Résumé du document

"Some developing countries are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, climate change, environmental degradation and external economic shocks. The member States and the EU will support disaster prevention and preparedness in these countries, with a view to increase their resilience in the face of these challenges". Through this commitment included in the EU Consensus on Development in 2005, the EU decided to pay a specific attention to developmental issues in a certain type of countries: fragile States. This concept appeared in the beginning of the 1990s, with the collapse of the Somali State; however, fragile States became a specific target of world development policies only in the beginning of the twenty-first century. As a result, some developmental institutions provided various definitions regarding the fragile State concept, in order to promote adequate policies towards them. For instance, the OECD defined these States as "countries where there is a lack of political commitment and insufficient capacity to develop and implement pro-poor policies" and the World Bank associated the concept of fragile States with "countries that are facing particularly severe development challenges such as weak governance, limited administrative capacity, violence and the legacy of conflict". As far as the European Union is concerned, the first reference to fragile States was made in the EU Consensus on Development and in the Paris Declaration. As a result, it makes us wonder if the EU, within its development policy, adopted a specific policy towards fragile States. And then, what are the main features of this policy? After studying the birth of a concern towards fragile States in the European Union, we will focus on the challenges and difficulties faced by the EU in its response to State fragility.

Extraits

[...] Then, another central point of the EU response to State fragility shall be effectiveness”: the EU shall try in more efficient way to implement the Paris Declaration in fragile situations. To this end, the EU shall mainly aim at state- and capacity building as we saw but the Union shall also focus conflict prevention and peace-building operations : though the European Union intervene frequently in post-crisis situations and has developed several strategy to manage such situations, the Union lacks preventive action. [...]

[...] Not to mention the facts that current efforts are made improve linkage between these instruments and make them more conflict- sensitive, development-friendly and needs-based so as to be well-adapted to the situations faced by fragile States The obstacles hindering the implementation of the policy However, the European Union faces several obstacles to use concretely these instruments to address State fragility. First, the European Union faces a major difficulty concerning the use of its financial instruments. Indeed, aid flows can trigger perverse effects because it can easily fall into the hands of political leaders unable or unwilling to use it to solve development and security issues : the aid effectiveness is thus likely to be hindered by the weaknesses of national government. Furthermore, economic and financial intervention of the EU may have ambivalent effects. [...]

[...] Therefore these policies shall aim at long-term peace- and state-building in fragile States so as to move them out of fragility. C. Instruments and difficulties of the European policy towards fragile States Finally, in order to implement this policy towards fragile States in a proper way, the European Union set some concrete instruments but faced some obstacles and difficulties The European Union's instruments to tackle State fragility Three types of instruments are available for the European Union to implement the policy framework dealing with fragile States. [...]

[...] Therefore, fragile countries have a very low level of resilience because of the combination of weak institutions and political fragmentation : this toxic association trigger a high exposure to shocks in fragile States. As a result, the European Union shall adopt a resilience- based approach to State fragility : its main goal should be to decrease shocks vulnerability in fragile States. Such an approach requires the European Union to articulate its interventions in fragile situations on state building and social cohesion. [...]

[...] As a result, the management of the European policy towards fragile States is deeply divided between the Council for its security side and the Commission for its development side : once again, this doesn't encourage the shaping of a coherent policy and this trigger a very complex and long decision-making process on operations and funding. Moreover, this risk of incoherence is increased by the fact that contrary to the Commission, the Council is not frequently well informed of all EU actions in a given country (since development, humanitarian or environmental actions are determined by the Commission) : as a result, its decision are likely to be poorly coherent with on-going activities and missions sent by the Commission. Moreover, it is important to mention another important institutional handicap of the EU policy towards fragile countries. [...]