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Until the last decade, neither national governments – with a few positive exceptions - nor the European institutions really understood the value and potential of local and regional governments’ contribution to international development. True, there was an EU funding programme for Decentralised Cooperation, but it was aimed largely at NGOs and was very little known or used by local authorities. The European Union also implemented a few programmes targeted at local and regional governments on a world regional basis, like Asia-Urbs and URB-AL aimed at supporting decentralised cooperation in Asia and Latin America respectively, but there was no general framework.
Since then, a lot has changed, not least in the approach of the European Union. The present general framework for the EU development policy is the European Consensus on Development dating 2006, which states in article 16 that “the EU encourages an increased involvement of national assemblies, parliaments and local authorities”. This resulted in the EU launching several instruments in 2007, including the European Development Fund and the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI).
It is worth noting that in its revised version of 2005, the Cotonou Agreement, which is the basis of the European Development Fund and relates to the ACP countries (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific), recognised local governments as key development actors. It opened a range of new opportunities to support democratic decentralisation processes (Article 33) and decentralised cooperation (Articles 70-71).
The Development Cooperation Instrument offered a new framework for the EU’s cooperation programmes, both regional and thematic. In particular the European Commission put forward its proposals for a new thematic funding programme, Non-State Actors and Local Authorities – shortened to NSA-LA. In the EU’s vocabulary, the term “local authorities” is defined very widely – it includes all kinds of sub-national governments, from the powerful law-making regions (German Länder, or Spanish regions) to small towns and municipalities.
The European Parliament played an important and valuable role in changing the EU’s approach. In March 2007, it overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on local authorities as actors for development, which set out the arguments in favour of local governments’ role and actions in this field, and called on the European Commission to provide financial support. The Parliament’s report was drafted by Member of Parliament Pierre Schapira, also a Deputy Mayor of Paris, and who is now a political-level representative of PLATFORMA.
This led to the adoption of the thematic strategy paper 2007-2010 of the NSA-LA programme which set out why local governments are so important to good quality local development:
“While they are part of the state structure, local authorities are much closer to the citizen than other public institutions and may offer significant expertise not only in terms of service delivery (education, health, water, transport etc.), building democratic institutions and effective administrations, but also as catalysts for change and confidence building between different parties. They can provide a long-term, country-wide vision on how to build inclusive societies as actors with the necessary political legitimacy and the capacity to mobilise other actors.”1
The NSA-LA programme came into effect in 2008. Under it, about €30 million a year is earmarked for local and regional authorities, which is only around 15% of the total, but it marks the first time that local authorities have had access to “their own” part of a programme. The NSA-LA programme, as we shall see, has limitations – but it is a great step forward.
In 2008 the Commission published a further Communication, entitled “Local Authorities: Actors for Development”, which assessed in more depth the important contribution of local and regional governments:
“While the involvement of local authorities in external cooperation and development policy, especially through town twinning, has a long history, the last decade has witnessed a radical change in its nature. Decentralised Cooperation has emerged as a new and important dimension of development cooperation. It has become more comprehensive and professionalised; relying on institutionalised networks with outreach into developing countries; utilising a diversity of tools in all the regions of the world and with an exponential increase in financial allocations”2.
1 2007-2010 strategy paper of the NSA-LA programme, European Commission.The document can be consulted at ec.europa.eu/europeaid/how/finance/dci/non_state_actors_en.htm
2 Communication from the Commission, “Local Authorities: actors for development”, 2008
