European Union

Campaign on extractives gathers speed in European Parliament

Mar 26th, 2012 11:30 AM UTC
By Isabelle De Lichtervelde

Together with Tearfund and the Publish What You Pay coalition, ONE organised an event in the European Parliament this Wednesday, to raise awareness about the transparency laws for oil, gas and mining companies currently under discussion.

Titled “Can transparency end the resource curse?” with Bishop Stephen Munga from Tanzania, an expert within the ‘Publish What You Pay’ movement there, MEP Birgit Schnieber-Jastram and our own Acting Brussels Director Alexander Woollcombe the briefing session attracted over 20 MEPs and Parliament staff as well as 30 activists and volunteers. Fiona Hall, a British MEP, said: “I’ve had more people contact my office on extractive industries transparency than anything else in recent years.”

ONE’s petition calling on leaders to pass strong transparency laws for oil, gas and mining companies is over 86 000 signatures strong. Tearfund and ONE supporters have sent numerous letters to their MEPs and some of them came to Brussels to meet with them and ask for their support.

This is a crucial time in the European Parliament, because next week German MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne and British MEP Arlene McCarthy will publish the draft Parliament reports on the EU transparency laws. It is important for the European Parliament to champion transparency, because in order for the EU laws to be adopted, they have to strike a deal with the Council of the European Union.

We need your support to make sure MEPs and EU member states don’t water down the laws. As Bishop Munga said during the event, “If information is published on the payments made to developing countries in return for oil, gas and mineral contracts, communities local to these projects, often exploited as a consequence, can be empowered to hold their governments to account”.

Click here to sign our petition!

EU moves to prevent future crises in the Horn of Africa

Mar 20th, 2012 11:26 AM UTC
By Isabelle De Lichtervelde

Last Friday in Copenhagen, EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Kristalina Georgieva and EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs together launched a €250 million initiative called ‘Supporting Horn of Africa Resilience’ (SHARE). ‘SHARE’ aims to break the vicious cycle of humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa and strengthen the population’s resistance to future crises.

During the height of the crisis, ONE members participated in a call with Commissioner Georgieva, to learn about the EU’s response at the time and urged her to increase the EU’s efforts. Following that, ONE launched its Hungry No More campaign and more than 400,000 members signed our petition urging leaders to break the cycle of famine.

Alexander Woollcombe ONE’s Acting Brussels Director said:

“ONE’s members called for leadership and EU leaders have listened. The ‘Charter to End Extreme Hunger’ lays out what needs to be done to prevent such crises from happening again. ONE welcomes the EU’s recognition of the need to link emergency aid with support for agriculture”.

Launching SHARE, Commissioner Georgieva explained:

“Europe has done its best to alleviate the suffering caused by hunger to millions of people in the region, but humanitarian assistance is like a dressing on a deep wound – it can offer relief, but it cannot cure the disease. To prevent future famines we need to combine the short-term humanitarian response with long-term support for resilience to future droughts. This is what we intend to do with SHARE,”

And Commissioner Piebalgs pointed out on his blog:

“Thanks to EuropeAid’s assistance, more than 750,000 Somali households benefit from increased access to improved drinking water and water for agricultural purposes; more than 50,000 Somali households benefit from support to livestock production, processing and trade; and more than 50,000 Somalis benefit from support to agricultural production”.

Much more remains to be done but this is a welcome step in the right direction.

If only Europe had 27 Helles

Mar 16th, 2012 9:41 AM UTC
By Alexander Woollcombe

They came on bicycles: 27 ONE and CONCORD Denmark activists calling on Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt to use the Danish Presidency of the EU to show leadership in the fight against extreme poverty.

At 730 this morning each volunteer donned a Helle mask and posed outside Parliament. The message was simple: if Europe had 27 Helles we would be on track to keep our aid promise to the world’s poor.

While it’s biologically unlikely to clone Helle like we did in our picture, we are calling on all 27 EU leaders to be like PM Thorning-Schmidt in one vital area: Denmark is one of only 4 EU Member States to have gone beyond its promise to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid.

The more than 30,000 ONE members who have signed our latest petition supported the following message that will be delivered to a representative of PM Thorning-Schmidt today:

“During your negotiations on the next seven year EU budget please agree to the level of international aid proposed in 2011, to ensure the EU continues to build on the amazing progress it has achieved in the fight against extreme poverty”.

We are delivering this petition today as DANIDA (Denmark’s Government Aid Agency) has brought together European Development Ministers for an important meeting on European Aid. We’re asking Denmark to pass on the message of our members to other European leaders within ongoing talks on the EU budget where aid spending is at risk.

This matters because EU aid has made a huge difference. Between 2004 and 2009, more than 9 million children were enrolled in primary education, more than 5 million were vaccinated against measles, and more than 31 million people were connected to clean water thanks to EU aid.

It was a cold, clear morning in Copenhagen but spirits were high among the Helles. Thanks to all of them for getting up so early and a special mention to ONE member Inger Kristensen who travelled for two and a half hours by train just to be with us this morning!

And if you haven’t signed our petition yet, now is your chance!

Call for a strong EU Aid budget

Mar 7th, 2012 6:07 PM UTC
By Stuart McWilliam

Last year ONE members successfully campaigned for proposals on the EU budget to include an increase in international aid. But this life saving aid-budget is now under threat. Right now European leaders are considering these proposals – with about 5% of the overall EU budget earmarked for international aid. It’s affordable and it will save countless lives while helping European countries keep their promises to the world’s poorest.

As European countries fight over far larger chunks of money for things like the Common Agricultural Policy, the aid budget is getting caught in the crossfire. Latest reports suggest the proposed amount could be cut by 30%, which would be a terrible setback in the fight against poverty. We urgently need your help to prevent this.

Please sign our petition calling on European leaders not to cut back on the proposed EU aid budget.

As the chair of the EU’s rotating presidency, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is responsible for getting agreement from leaders on the priorities for the EU budget this spring, with a key meeting taking place in Copenhagen next week. Denmark has a proud record in the fight against extreme poverty around the world. Our petition calls on Prime Minister Thorning- Schmidt to ensure Europe protects its promise to the poorest.

EU aid has made a huge difference. Between 2004 and 2009, more than 9 million children were enrolled in primary education, more than 5 million were vaccinated against measles, and more than 31 million people were connected to clean water thanks to EU aid.

With your help we can help to ensure the next EU aid budget is as strong as possible and continues to save lives and lift millions out of poverty.

Together as ONE we can make a difference.

The Financial Times and Economist back transparency laws

Feb 27th, 2012 3:20 PM UTC
By Joseph Powell

Leading business publications the Financial Times and The Economist have recently voiced their support for transparency laws on both sides of the Atlantic that will help reduce corruption in developing countries and increase the resources spent on poverty reduction. They join the voices of 180,000 ONE members who have called for policy-makers to stand firm against lobbying by a small group of oil and mining companies who want to maintain the secrecy status quo (you can still sign our US and European petitions).

In its editorial today the Financial Times writes:

“In the past two years, the US Congress and the European Commission have acted boldly to clear up the murkiness in which natural resource companies’ payments to governments around the world are clouded. Lobbying efforts aimed at overturning this progress on both sides of the Atlantic should not be allowed to succeed.”

The Economist has taken a similar line. In a leader article on February 11^th it wrote:

“The mining firms… should support Western efforts to impose greater transparency on the industry. This will drive away at least some of the cowboys and make competition more open. Time to side with the sheriff.”

Both publications have highlighted how important it is that the proposed US and European Union laws are fit for purpose, and deliver information that genuinely empowers civil society in developing countries to hold their political leaders accountable for the revenue received. The Financial Times writes:

“Many extractive companies are happy to live with [public reporting], but the most recalcitrant demand changes. On both sides of the Atlantic the fight is on to reshape the reporting rules so that whatever is published is less informative. In particular, it is suggested that the laws’ call for reporting project-by-project details be watered down with overbroad definitions of “project”. There is no justification for this: most payments to states are calculated on a project basis anyway, so publishing such detail is no great burden.”

They are correct that aggregating payments at a country level would not deliver the same benefits in terms of accountability. If only payments of over $1 million were disclosed – something that extractive companies are lobbying for – local communities would be excluded from accessing all the information relevant to projects in their vicinity.

The Economist also examined the claim that disclosure rules would be in contravention of domestic law in some countries, but find that:

“Businesspeople struggle to produce examples of how local restrictions on publishing confidential contract details could clash with transparency requirements elsewhere. Contracts in developing countries typically have a clause permitting disclosures that are required by the company’s home country and stock exchange. Nor does greater disclosure seem to hurt competitiveness. In 2011 Angola awarded several new deepwater oil concessions to firms covered by Dodd-Frank. No oil company has so far cited increased openness as a material risk in its SEC filings.”

This spike in attention on this issue from the world’s leading financial media shows the intense scrutiny on the US and EU law-making process. Watering down key details will undermine efforts to reduce corruption and end the ‘natural resource curse’. Both the Financial Times and The Economist – known for their business-friendly coverage – have looked at the evidence and concluded these laws are good for the long-term interests of companies and good for economic development in poor countries. That is a winning formula that policy-makers should now heed.

60,000 and counting: ONE members call on Germany and France to keep their promise to the world’s poor

Feb 10th, 2012 4:24 PM UTC
By Alicia Blázquez

Many thanks to the more than 60,000 ONE members that have signed our petition calling on the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to keep their promise to the world’s poor.

Earlier this month ONE members – and current interns – Anne and Katrin handed the long list of signatures (burnt on a CD) over to the Federal Chancellery and the FDP headquarters in Berlin.

You can see more photos on facebook.

Even though our petition continues we wanted to hand the signatures over before an important EU summit– in case the financial transactions tax (or FTT for short) was discussed.

It’s been a busy few weeks for the campaign. Prior to the summit President Sarkozy announced that France will charge a tax of 0.1% on financial transactions. German opposition leader Sigmar Gabriel demanded: “We need to see deeds.” According to a spokesperson of finance minister Schäuble, however, the government does not want to follow Sarkozy’s approach, at least not for now. Instead the existing proposal by the European Commission, which is more extensive, will be further examined. In fact, the President Sarkozy’s FTT allows certain exceptions, which is why some French NGOs consider the tax to be inadequate.

That means our French colleagues and the team here in Germany have to keep pushing for a FTT against poverty! The campaign continues – we’ll keep you up to date.

Paul Collier backs European transparency law

Feb 2nd, 2012 1:20 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

Guest post from Paul Collier, author of ‘The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity With Nature’ and member of ONE’s Africa Policy Advisory Board.

The ‘resource curse’ is one of the most persistent paradoxes of international development. For decades the natural resources of poor countries have been plundered: the few expropriating what should benefit the many, and the current generation squandering what should also benefit future generations. The current global boom in commodities provides many poor countries with an unprecedented opportunity to escape poverty, yet the default option is for history to repeat itself. One of the most pressing issues in the fight against global poverty is how to prevent this repetition.

Repetition is not inevitable. For example, Germany learnt from hyperinflation. But to avoid a repeat of the resource curse the pressures for plunder must be faced down. Some of the necessary actions must be taken by the governments of resource-rich countries, but we ourselves need to take complementary actions.

Fortunately we are now at a moment of opportunity, and Germany’s support will be crucial. The European Commission has  published proposals that would oblige all European extractive industry companies to become more transparent in their operations abroad. If enacted, these companies will have to publish the payments they make to the governments of every country where they operate. The legislation aims to go at least as far as ground-breaking US legislation that was passed in 2010. This means that a global standard for legally binding transparency in the extractive industries is within reach for the first time. The French President is in full support of this initiative.  Even Britain, where more extractive companies’ are headquartered than in any other EU-member state, used a G20 finance ministers meeting to express unequivocal backing.  It is unsettling that the German government, a champion of extractive transparency in years past, is silent at this historic moment.

The draft disclosure requirements will provide the perfect complement to actions taken within the poor countries themselves. Citizens need the data that would be made available by these companies to better hold their governments accountable for the money they receive for the country’s natural resources. Over 600 civil society organisations worldwide have signed up to the ‘Publish What You Pay’ coalition. Citizens, many of whom have risked arrest to fight embezzlement, will be newly empowered with the tools they need to force positive change. As the Arab Spring so ably demonstrated, ordinary citizens care deeply about transparent and accountable governance.

Of course transparency is only a means to an end. The prize is the better use of huge resource revenues, enabling a dramatic improvement in social and economic development.  In 2008 exports of oil, gas and minerals from Africa were worth roughly nine times the value of overseas aid ($393-billion versus $44-billion), creating considerable government income through licences and taxes. In many countries those revenues account for the vast majority of government revenues – more than 80% in the case of Angola. Even if enhanced transparency were only to improve the efficiency of natural resource revenue spending incrementally, it would easily yield more than Germany’s entire aid program for sub-Saharan Africa.

In a time of economic austerity across Europe policies like these which help African governments to mobilise their own resources for development are even more important. Aid budgets are now under pressure. In the long-run, fostering greater reliance on taxes can help develop cohesive states and reduce aid dependency.

The discussions on the detail of the new European legislation are now critical. For the new legislation to effectively empower citizens in situations like this, it needs to include the disclosure of financial information at the project level. Only these disaggregated figures give citizens and local communities the information to hold government accountable. In addition, financial information only at the country level will not help citizens curtail the official under-pricing of national assets, such as the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo where contracts have officially been sold for a sixteenth of the market price – an indication that kick-backs are taking place.

Project-level disclosure is also a way to improve the functioning of the natural resource market and therefore makes good business sense: wide discrepancies in the valuation of assets can be hidden by aggregating data at the country-level. A more efficient market system can operate if this secrecy ends. It is no coincidence that major investors successfully joined hands with civil society to have project –level disclosure included in the ground-breaking US legislation.

The good news is: the current draft of the European Commission includes project-level disclosure and both the French President Sarkozy and the British Premier Cameron support this critical detail.

Germany has been a strong champion for extractive transparency ever since the Heiligendamm G8 summit. This is evidenced by the long-standing support Germany gave to EITI, a voluntary multi-stakeholder transparency initiative that has worked well in resource rich countries that showed the will to improve their transparency. However, it is for those countries which ignore EITI that the new legislation is needed and Germany can reinforce its role as an international leader on extractive transparency by supporting the new law.

But while the German government has indicated its general support for this EU legislation some European partners have noticed that a number of German ministries remain sceptical of the key feature described above: project-level disclosure. In line with its excellent track record on improving extractive transparency, Germany should now endorse the current strong legislation. Improved accountability in the natural resource sector leads to more stability in resource rich countries and better markets – both central aims of the German resource strategy.

We are now at a rare moment: we know that some legislation will be enacted. But as with all legislation, the devil is in the detail. Lobbyists for the interests of continuing plunder and irresponsible business practices are attempting to dilute key features while paying lip-service to noble objectives. If we permit the lobbyists to win we become complicit in frustrating change: remember, the default option is for the current resource booms to be the biggest missed opportunity for poverty reduction in history. Germany needs to decide now whether it is happy to be complicit in frustrating this chance for change or if it wants to join the fight against a repetition of the hugely destructive resource curse.

This post first appeared in the Handelsblatt newspaper.

Bill Gates in Brussels: Living Proof in Action!

Jan 24th, 2012 5:55 PM UTC
By Johanna Stratmann

“Inspiring!” -  “Deeply impressed!”  – “Excellent!”

“The greatest speech I’ve heard in my eight years in the European Parliament’s Development Committee!” Gay Mitchell MEP

This week Bill Gates took Brussels by storm – a whirlwind 24 hours of meetings and events with EU leaders, culminated in his Living Proof speech in front of a full house in the European Parliament’s main chamber this afternoon.

The cause of this enthusiasm was a very simple, but effective message – aid works, and especially in these times of crisis, it is critical that the European Union continues its leadership as the world’s second biggest donor. Bill Gates made the case for continued EU investments in vaccines and agriculture and showed how development aid has helped change the world for the better in recent decades.

His visit couldn’t have been timelier. The 27 EU Member States and the European Parliament have recently kicked-off negotiations on a seven-year budget for the EU, of which €57 billion is at stake for future development spending. By showing that the Europe’s generosity has had a real impact on people’s lives in developing countries and by encouraging Parliamentarians to stand up and fight for EU aid in the next seven year budget, Bill Gates has helped strengthen the resolve of existing aid champions and reached out to many that are yet to become supporters of our cause. The new President of the Parliament Martin Schulz wrapped up his first address to the Parliament by reiterating the importance of development spending, “irrespective of political colours, the European Parliament will stand shoulder to shoulder with you”.

Today the EU’s top decision makers were reminded quite how much is at stake in the budgets they are responsible for. The ONE team, working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will make sure words are matched by action in the difficult negotiations to come!

Watch what he had to say:

For Bill Gates’ joint video statement with European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs, please click here.

Watch Bill Gates live at the European Parliament

Jan 24th, 2012 12:15 PM UTC
By Tamira Gunzburg

Today, Bill Gates will address the Development Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels. After his speech, the newly elected president of the European Parliament, Martin Shultz, will make closing remarks.

Watch the debate live here from 2-3:30 pm CET (1-2:30 GMT/UTC), and share your thoughts using #livingproof on twitter!

Gates will be talking about Living Proof, which shares stories and facts about the incredible progress being achieved by people in developing countries as a result of smart aid investments. Since stepping down from his role as CEO of Microsoft Bill Gates has dedicated himself to the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation works with ONE in fighting extreme poverty and poor health in developing countries.

The address on Living Proof comes at a crucial time – this year the European Parliament and EU member states will decide on the EU’s next 7-year budget. The current proposals foresee 57 billion euros for development cooperation, and ONE will be working hard to ensure that European leaders protect this funding aimed at the poorest countries in the world.

Tune in to ONE.org for more info and actions on EU aid in the coming months!

Bill Gates to share the Living Proof in the European Parliament

Jan 23rd, 2012 10:22 AM UTC
By Tamira Gunzburg

Tomorrow, Bill Gates will address the Development Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels.

Since stepping down from his role as CEO of Microsoft Bill Gates has dedicated himself to the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation works with ONE in fighting extreme poverty and poor health in developing countries particularly through Living Proof, which Gates will be present in Brussels tomorrow at the European Parliament. “Living Proof” shares stories and facts about the incredible progress being achieved by people in developing countries as a result of smart aid investments.

His address comes at a crucial time – this year the European Parliament and EU member states will decide on the EU’s next 7-year budget. The current proposals foresee 57 billion euros for development cooperation, and ONE will be working hard to ensure that European leaders protect this funding aimed at the poorest countries in the world.

After Bill Gates’ speech, the newly elected president of the European Parliament, Martin Shultz, will make closing remarks. Watch it all live here on the ONE blog tomorrow from 2-3:30pm CET (1-2:30pm GMT/UTC).

Be sure to follow the action and let us know your thoughts using #livingproof on twitter! ONE needs you this year to help secure EU development aid until 2020!