SAARC
initiatives on Regional cooperation--1
Q.A.M.A Rahim,
Secretary- General of SAARC
A Network of
Researchers on Global Financial and Economic Issues has been set up to identify, analyze
and help SAARC face up to global developments affecting the region. From Nepal, the Center
for Economic Development and Administration is a member of this SAARC Network. The Network
has been doing very useful work since its establishment. It is now bringing out regularly
a publication "South Asia Economic Journal". It has compiled a directory of
South Asian Institutes doing research in economic areas. This directory has been uploaded
on the website of the SAARC Secretariat. The Network is engaged in carrying out studies in
various identified subjects through its Members. A Regional Conference on Globalization
and Agriculture: Challenges for South Asia is going to be organized in New Delhi on 4-5
December 2002 jointly by RIS, New Delhi and IPS, Colombo. The Pakistan Institute of
Development Economics, PIDE, Islamabad is undertaking a "Study on Comparative
Advantage and Trade Complementaries in South Asia", and the Center for Economic
Development and Administration, CEDA, Kathmandu is undertaking a study on the Role of
International Financial Institutions in the SAARC region.
SAARCFINANCE, a
regional network of the Central Bank Governors and the Finance Secretaries, has held six
meetings since its inception in September 1998 following the Tenth SAARC Summit in
Colombo. A SAARCFINANCE Cell has been established in 1998 in each Member Central Bank,
with SAARCFINANCE Coordinators to coordinate work within member states. The Terms of
Reference of SAARCFINANCE were approved at the Eleventh SAARC Summit in Kathmandu in
January 2002. The Summit also accorded the recognition to SAARCFINANCE as a formal SAARC
body.
The SAARC Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, SCCI, was approved by the SAARC Council of Ministers in December
1992. The present president of SCCI is Mr. Padma Jyoti from Nepal. Since its inception,
SCCI has been playing a key role in assisting the SAARC process in augmenting trade and
economic cooperation among the member countries of SAARC. The main thrust areas of SCCI
are awareness building, developing global linkages, providing services, working closely
with governments and developing institutional framework for supporting economic
cooperation. SCCI Tourism Council (STC), SCCI Construction Industry Council (SCIC) and
SCCCCI women Entrepreneur Council (SWEC) have also been established under the SAARC
Chamber. These are excellent examples of public-private partnership initiatives under
SAARC.
II. Poverty
Alleviation: Let us now come to Poverty Alleviation, which is perhaps the most important
area of cooperation. SAARC has made many efforts towards achieving the goal of poverty
alleviation in the region. Recognizing the imperative need to address poverty related
issues, an Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation (ISACPA) was
established by the SAARC Leaders at the Sixth Summit (Colombo 1991) to suggest strategies
and measures to alleviate poverty in the region. The Commission reporting to the Seventh
summit (DAKA 1993) provide a radical conceptual framework for poverty alleviation through
social mobilization and empowerment of the poor in South Asia. The Summit welcomed the
report and expressed its commitment to eradicating poverty form South Asia through an
agricultural development, small-scale labor-intensive industrialization, and human
resources development. The Summit also stressed that within the conceptual approach of
"Dal-Bhaat", the right to work and primary education should receive priority.
Following the Eight Summit (New Delhi 1995), a three-tier mechanism was established for
dealing with poverty issues; first-tier comprising the Secretaries in the governments
dealing with poverty eradication and social development; second Finance/Planning
Secretaries, and third comprising Financial/planning Ministers. Two rounds of Meetings
under the three-tier mechanism have already taken place. The Planning/Finance Ministers
during their last Meeting in Islamabad in April this year adopted a Plan of Action
consisting of domestic as well as external policies to deal with the issue of poverty
alleviation. The next Summit in Islamabad is expected to approve the Plan of Action.
During the Eleventh
Summit, the Leaders reviewed the SAARC activities aimed at poverty alleviation and decided
to reinvigorate them in the context of the regional and global commitments to poverty
reduction. In this regard, they decided to reconstitute ISACPA with the mandate to review
the recommendations of the earlier Commission and to suggest measures and strategies for
down-scaling the incidence of poverty in the region. The reconstituted ISAACPA has met
four times (Kathmandu, New Delhi, Islamabad and Dhaka) and is expected to meet at its
final session on 12 December in Kathmandu. H.E. Mr. Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, former Prime
Minister of Nepal the Conveyor of the reconstituted ISACPA. It plans to present its Report
to the Twelfth Summit scheduled in Islamabad in January 2003.
The Eleventh Summit
also mandated me to prepare a Regional Poverty Profile (RPP). The RPP which is expected to
be completed by the end of this year would among other things, provide an up-to-date pen
picture of the poverty situation in the region, including its recent trends and future
projection; serve as a monitoring tool as far as the poverty scenarios of the SAARC Member
States are concerned; enable governments to tackle poverty in a systematic manner; serve
as an advocacy tool to stir up policymakers into action; and act as a policy tool to
promote regional cooperation, especially with regard to designing a regional program
project for tackling poverty.
The eleventh Summit
also mandated me to prepare a Regional Poverty Profile (RPP). The RPP which is expected to
be completed by the end of this year would, among other things, provide an up-to-date pen
picture of the poverty situation in the region, including its recent trends and future
projections; serve as a monitoring tool as far as the poverty scenarios of the SAARC
Member States are concerned; enable governments to tackle poverty in a systematic manner;
serve as an advocacy tool to stirnin up policymaker's into action; an act as a policy tool
to promote regional cooperation, especially with regard to designing a regional
program/project for tackling poverty.
The eleventh Summit
underlined the urgent need to make the South Asian Development Fund (SADE) effectively
operational by utilizing the exciting resources for implementation of specific priority
regional poverty alleviation projects.they also instructed me to explore the possibility
of obtaining assistance from regional and international sources for the implementation of
such project .I have initiated the process of dialogue with regional and international
founding sources, namely the world bank and the Asian Development Bank and various
interested UN agencies. However, in the absence of any specific project found it rather
difficult to pursue this initiative. Therefore, we at the Secretariat with our limited
technical expertise came up with some project ideas dealing with education, healthcare,
micro-credit and renewable energy, and presented these to the council for its
consideration.
(To be
continued)
The
New Face of Europe
An idea is about to be completed.
The decisions made today will mould the Europe of tomorrow
By Josef Janning, Germany
Europe is no longer
a place of trivialities. It would be wrong to reduce the content of European integration
to the oft-quoted pettiness of European regulations – e.g. prescribing the angle of
curvature of cucumbers at the weekly market or the design of tractor seats and lawnmowers.
Classic and elementary government services such as welfare and security can no longer be
provided today without the European Union. In other words, integration policy, its
procedures and institutions are part of the substance and not the ornamentation of
politics in Europe. Every major topic affecting societies on this continent simultaneously
brings up the subject of the EU’s contribution, since there are few issues that do
not impact on other Europeans.
A history of
integration
While the citizens
of Europe have still been gradually coming to terms with this central role of Europe in
political life, the European Union has already been moving on. Time seems to have been
passing more quickly since the epoch change of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
establishment of free-market democracies in central and eastern Europe. Great events and
profound, radical changes are becoming part of history almost before their effects and
consequences have been fully understood. Many of the spiritual fathers of the
transformation to democracy and the market economy, who had themselves experienced the
lack of freedom and privation of dictatorship for many years, have long since stepped down
or been replaced, and some of them are almost forgotten today.
Only Vâclav Havel, poet, dissident and President of the Czech Republic, still forms a
visible bridge of continuity between the winter of 1989/90 and the decisions of the
present: the Prague NATO summit and the eastward expansion of the alliance, the Copenhagen
summit and the conclusion of the accession negotiations leading up to the biggest
enlargement of the European Union in the history of integration.
The European Union
itself has also been experiencing history in quick motion. Ever since German unification,
there has been one government conference after the other, and three major treaty reforms
have been discussed, negotiated and ratified – the Maastricht Treaty focusing on
monetary union, the Amsterdam Treaty which restructured foreign policy, and the Nice
Treaty with its changes to decision-making systems and processes. Each of these treaties
met with a mixed reception among European public opinion: some people felt the changes
went decidedly too far, while many felt they did not go far enough. Certainly, few
politicians or ordinary people regarded the reforms as integration’s final answer to
the challenges of an undivided Europe. As a result, each of the treaty reforms had to
point to the next stage in order to gain acceptance. The draft of a forward-looking,
sustainable political order for the community of all European democracies that is both
understandable and practicable, democratically drawn up and efficient, creating a uniform
system of government while still retaining the autonomy of the European states, a
superpower but not super state, as Tony Blair demanded – this future draft of an
enlarged Europe is yet to be found.
As the political
bazaar of the negotiations in Nice showed, the answer will not emerge from the diplomatic
struggle between governments. This is the task of the European Convent in Brussels, where
parliamentarians and representatives of the present and future members, under the
chairmanship of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, will be working until mid-2003 on
designing the future of an enlarged Europe.
Putting the
finishing touches to Europe
The system of
government that seems to be emerging in the deliberations bears the traits of classical
statehood – albeit with clearly defined powers. The greater Europe will be based on a
constitution that respects citizens’ fundamental rights and represents their
interests, both as Europeans and as citizens of their country, in legislation through
co-operation between the European Parliament and the Council. Parliament would elect a
President of the European Commission to head the executive; the Council would elect a
President of the European Council to chair this representative body of the member states;
add to this the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, and the system of
governing Europe would have the faces that are so important for communicating and
assigning political decisions. Majority decisions following clear rules would have to be
added to make sure this larger European Union was able to make decisions.
Brussels, Prague and
Copenhagen are the places that are opening the next chapter in the history of the
continent’s unification. This chapter could be called "Putting the finishing
touches to Europe," because the decisions made in the three capitals have the
hallmarks of finality in several respects. If they endure, they will stake out the virtual
completion of the integration process; should they prove insufficient, however, they could
end up in our memories as a synonym for pushing a great idea too far, causing its decline
and fall. After all, the imminent enlargement of the European Union to include central and
eastern Europe will more or less define its physical area.
It extends from the
Atlantic to the Russian border. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland will then still be missing
in the west, and the Balkan states in the southeast. If Turkey joins later, the next
question will be the possible accession of Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus. Europe
could not extend any further, unless Russia, the Europe-facing Maghreb states of North
Africa, or Israel in the Middle East were to join. Once the Convent has completed drafting
the constitution, the depth of integration will also be largely defined – in terms of
both the powers at the European level and the political and institutional system of
integration. As far as the classic areas of state jurisdiction is concerned, the only
tasks that Europe would lack would be defence and social security. The European level
already has an influence on both of these fields today.
However, the face of
a greater Europe also bears other traits apart from those of a structure in a given phase
of completion. This other Europe can be seen in the tasks of transformation policy that
remain to be done in the new democracies, one of which is the social question in the
market economies of central and eastern Europe. Many of the future member countries have
yet to strike the right balance between the national autonomy won in 1989 and the demands
of co-operating in a supranational system of governments – this balance will have to
be gradually developed and consolidated in the years of membership.
In its recent
progress report the Commission certified ten of the thirteen candidates as being ready for
entry. Yet the basic economic data are enough to show that the stabilization of democracy
and the market economy will require additional exertion. For example, inflation is well
above the European Union average in Slovakia and Slovenia; unemployment is also
disturbingly high in some states, for example in Lithuania or Poland and Slovakia. The
prosperity divide will remain considerable for the foreseeable future – Latvia’s
gross domestic product (GDP) is only a third of the European Union average; Cyprus, by
contrast, has already reached 80 per cent of the European Union level. Bulgaria, Romania
and Turkey, however, which will not be in the coming round of enlargement, are in an even
worse position.
With GDP at only 22
per cent of the European Union average and a current inflation rate of 57.6 per cent,
Turkey brings up the rear in this group – a clear indication that it is not only
deficits in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human and minority rights that are
standing in the way of any imminent accession, but also the economic gulf between this
country of 80 million people and the states of the European Union.
The process
of stabilization
The EU’s
convergence and enlargement process itself has had a considerable stabilizing effect. In
none of the candidate countries have the ethnic tensions and conflicts that are common in
the region escalated into the kind of war or attempts at genocide that have blighted
development in the western Balkans over the last ten years. For the most part, border
disputes and minority rights have been sorted out in a constructive way – even if it
has often required massive external pressure from the European Union. Almost everywhere,
the prospect of entry to the European Union has encouraged continuity in the politics of
reform even where changes of government and the pendulum swings of disappointed voter
expectations have led to constant political change. In the societies of central and
eastern Europe, the high expectations as to the effects of entry into the European Union
still seem exaggerated today. The fact is often overlooked that, for instance, the
economic effects of entry on investment have already begun, and that trade has already
been largely liberalized. The success stories of previous accession countries, such as
Spain or Portugal, and above all the Irish economic miracle, boost the European
Union’s appeal; yet the preconditions are largely unknown. Disappointed expectations
could poison the political climate in the first years of membership – and this would
surely have consequences for the European policy of the new members at the Brussels
Council table.
The political
climate in the European Union will also change with the entry of the ten new members in
2004 and the next wave a few years later. The Franco-German tensions, as well as the
differences between Paris and London in the context of the latest EU summit in Brussels,
have given an initial impression of things to come. Similarly, the haggling over the
weighting of votes and majority decision-making during the negotiations on the Nice Treaty
have not been forgotten. The circle of countries receiving transfer payments from Brussels
will grow – demands from the southwest of the Union will have to be weighed against
the needs of the new east; at the same time, wealthy beneficiaries of the agricultural
policy such as France and rebate recipients like the United Kingdom intend to resolutely
hold on to their vested rights. Germany, too, will want to stick to its special interests
in economic policy, although Germany, like the European Union as a whole, will also draw
economic benefit from the enlargement of markets and locations, as well as from the new
members’ growth potential. Distribution conflicts, which already rank among the most
difficult control issues in European politics today, will become increasingly fierce in
the enlarged European Union – they make a genuine reform of the decision-making
system all the more urgent. There is much evidence to suggest that the logic of previous
decision-making packages – which offered something for everyone – will no longer
work in a Europe of 25 nations.
The
pressures of world politics
A thorough reform of
policy will be needed after the present Convent has completed its structural reform. The
deadline has already been fixed – 2006/07, when the European Union’s current
financial framework has to be renegotiated. 25 governments will sit round the table and
have to come to a unanimous agreement on EU income and expenditure, hopefully for the last
time.
Although
Europeans’ attention will be primarily directed inward during these years, an
enlarged Europe will also be part of a changed international situation. A larger Europe
will be even more vulnerable and exposed than today’s European Union. It will border
directly on areas of instability and weak democracies. Belarus and Ukraine will become
direct neighbours of the world’s largest single market, and the Caucasus will be very
close by. An enlarged Europe will need an active Ostpolitik in order to process the
political consequences of economic and social asymmetry along its external borders. At the
same time Europe’s greater weight in the world economy and world trade will rouse new
expectations on the Europeans’ role in world politics. Yet enthusiasm for European
foreign policy in the world outside will increasingly wane if that policy remains
paralysed by the need to square the positions of the various member countries. And
Turkey’s entry would shift the European community’s external frontier to the
borders with Syria, Iraq and Iran. In a Europe with these neighbours, a policy of good
neighbourliness will inevitably become an issue of world politics. |
