Recent research from Oxford Economic Forecasting showed that the EU's Common Agricultural Policy costs over £80 billion a year, and damages third world farmers by keeping them out of our markets. The EU even uses environmental policies as hidden trade barriers, hurting third world countries where otherwise millions could be lifted out of poverty. Food is the only thing that much of the third world can sell to Europe. The report estimates that, unrestricted by EU barriers, Africa's GDP would increase by 5% - hugely more useful than anything Bob Geldof can manage. If you want to make poverty history, make the EU history first.
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The European Union has also taken over much of the aid budgets of the member states. EU bureaucracy results in long delays, often years, before any aid gets though to the people who need it, even for emergency aid in dealing with national disasters. EU-funded projects often tend to be grandiose and misdirected, and deliver little benefit but much disruption to the people affected. The results can include restricted development, continuing poverty, animal and plant species devastated, and deforestation.
"Thanks to Euro-leadership, Africa is currently projected to clear wildlands greater than the land area of Texas in the next 20 years"
Center for Global Food Issues
EU Aid Policy isn't Working: Cutting out the Middleman could Release a Billion Euros for Extra Aid
A new report from Open Europe, released in the run up to the G8 summit on June 6, finds that the EU is not spending its aid budget effectively. Around a quarter of the UK's total aid budget is managed by the European Commission, and the EU institutions are the second largest aid donor in the world. But the EU's record as an aid donor is not good. Seven years ago International Development Minister Clare Short stated that the European Commission was "the worst development agency in the world".
Open Europe's study finds that while the EU's performance as an aid donor has improved in some respects, it has got substantially worse in others. Overall it concludes that the money would be more effectively spent directly through the UK Department for International Development (DFID) - which is one of the best performing aid agencies in the world.
The study finds that EU aid is not focusing enough on the poorest countries. Whilst the share of the UK aid budget going to low income countries went up from 62% to 81% between 1990 and 2004, the EU has been moving in the opposite direction. The share of the EU aid budget going to low income countries fell from 63% to just 32% over the same period.
The report also finds that 21% of EU aid money arrives more than a year late, compared to just 3% for other aid donors. 40% of delays to aid projects are the result of the "administrative processes of the EU" - while only 25% were due to administrative problems in the (supposedly) less advanced countries which are receiving the aid.
Such bureaucratic processes represent an added cost, not a saving, for EU aid delivery. Closing the Commission's 118 delegations and scaling back admin spending in Brussels could release huge sums for real aid - potentially over a billion euros a year. Further waste is caused by the level of fraud in EU aid programmes, which is even higher than the Brussels average.
The EU's "Economic Partnership Agreements" could spell Disaster for Developing Countries
Open Europe has reported that the EU is bullying third world countries into signing Economic Partnership Agreements, by threatening a sharp increase in EU tariffs against them if they do not sign. These agreements force countries to eliminate about 80% of their tariffs on imports from the EU. This will divert to the EU business which would have gone to internal producers or other countries. Only the EU will benefit.
We will Leave the European Union - Give Us a Referendum
