Improving the effectiveness of Community aid

The Committee has adopted the report by Charles GOERENS (ELDR, L). This asks the EU not to dissipate efforts in a wide variety of measures that are limited in scope but to integrate projects into a sectoral approach and let them be seen as support measures rather than as objectives in themselves. The EU should pay attention to the economic and social value, viability and appropriateness of measures. Those associated with the programme should include not only donors and beneficiary governments but direct beneficiaries and NGOs. The Commission is asked to set up a central unit to assume overall control of the evaluation of its development aid programmes, including ECHO, MEDA, PHARE and TACIS. The committee would like the Commission itself to deal with and administer the cooperation projects submitted by NGOs and not hand them over to independent bodies. With regard to development aid, it hopes that decision-making will be separated from technical project management tasks and that the latter will be centralized in a joint service to manage Community aid to third countries. Finally it proposes that Parliament should establish its own analysis and evaluation capacity on development aid. �