By Toby Vogel
EU pledges nearly €350m, diplomats will discuss military deployment.
[europeanvoice.com] The EU has increased its aid to Haiti to €337 million in a bid to meet the country’s immediate and longer-term aid needs in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake.
The decision, which was taken at an emergency meeting of member states‘ development ministers in Brussels today, envisages €30m in emergency aid, including €3m pledged last week, and €107m during the early phases of the recovery process.
The EU will provide at least another €200m for long-term reconstruction, Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, told reporters in Brussels.
De Gucht said that the EU’s longer-term aid would seek to rebuild Haiti’s public administration, which was extremely weak even before the disaster.
These figures do not include emergency assistance already pledged by individual EU member states, which the Commission says currently amounts to €92m.
Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain’s foreign minister and the representative of the EU’s rotating presidency, said in Brussels today that the United Nations had yesterday requested security assistance for the delivery of aid. There had been a “positive reaction” by EU member states to the idea of sending 140-150 members of the European gendarmerie force, a joint scheme by France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, Moratinos said.
“There is an urgent need for greater security,” he said.
This afternoon, Catherine Ashton,the EU’s foreign policy chief, will meet member states‘ security ambassadors to discuss the UN’s request, which is expected to be formalised in the coming hours.
Security is currently maintained by UN peacekeepers, who suffered losses when the earthquake hit Haiti last Tuesday (12 January), and by US marines deployed after the earthquake. The US administration says that around 10,000 US soldiers are to be in or around Haiti by the end of today.
Ashton and De Gucht will take part in a debate on Haiti in the European Parliament in Strasbourg tomorrow and have vowed to deliver aid with the greatest possible transparency.
Ashton will travel to Washington, DC, and New York on Wednesday for talks with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, while De Gucht will travel to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s devastated capital.
Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said today that, at an informal summit on 11 February, EU leaders will discuss Haiti and the role that EU might play in an international conference on the country’s reconstruction currently being mooted.
The crisis is testing the EU’s new foreign policy structures under the Lisbon treaty and has caught many officials as they move from one job to another. De Gucht is in line to become the European commissioner for trade, but there is considerable uncertainty about the candidacy of Bulgaria’s Rumiana Jeleva, who is to take over humanitarian aid from De Gucht.
Spain, which assumed the rotating presidency less than three weeks ago, is also finding its role in foreign affairs, but it has already taken a lead in assisting EU citizens in Haiti wishing to be evacuated.
Source: http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2010/01/eu-steps-up-aid-to-haiti/66909.aspx
