Onderzoek Europese Rekenkamer naar Europese hulp i.v.m. tsunami (en)

Met dank overgenomen van Europese Rekenkamer i, gepubliceerd op maandag 19 juni 2006.

ECA/06/14

Luxembourg, 19 June 2006

Information note of the European Court of Auditors on Special Report No 3/2006 concerning the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Response to the Tsunami [1]

The European Commission has a specific Directorate General, DG ECHO, to respond to humanitarian crises. DG ECHO does not implement relief activities directly, but through partners which consist of NGOs and international organisations including United Nations and Red Cross. Following the tsunami of 26 December 2004, which caused widespread death and destruction in many countries of the Indian Ocean, the Commission granted humanitarian aid funding of 123 million euro.

The Court has visited the central services in Brussels as well as partners and projects in Sri Lanka and Indonesia to examine whether the Commission responded to the tsunami sufficiently quickly, with appropriate resources and in coordination with other actors. The audit also examined whether DG ECHO's monitoring and control procedures ensured that projects implemented by partners were relevant, timely, efficiently implemented, achieved their expected results and were adequately sustainable.

Concerning the speed and level of the response, the Court has found that Commission procedures enabled a rapid response to the tsunami, granting 3 million euro the same day as the disaster, followed by a further 20 million euro within five days. Further decisions in February and December 2005 made a total of 123 million euro of humanitarian aid. The high level of funding proved appropriate particularly due to the longer than expected transition from the relief phase to the reconstruction phase. It also enabled the Commission to respond to the needs of those not directly affected by the tsunami, but who were living in tsunami districts and had been affected by conflicts in Sri Lanka and Indonesia which preceded the tsunami. DG ECHO's decision to work with existing partners in Sri Lanka enabled it to fund relevant projects in spite of the situation of overfunding and overcrowding caused by the large number of newly arrived NGOs.

Regarding coordination, DG ECHO supported the coordination role of the United Nations and provided funding to address the lack of reliable and accurate information on needs. Regarding coordination with other EU services, there has been good coordination to ensure a smooth link between short term relief efforts and longer term reconstruction. However, coordination between DG ECHO and the Civil Protection Mechanism, based in DG Environment and responsible for the coordination of Member States' civil protection assistance, was problematic.

Concerning the relevance of projects and the efficiency of their implementation, the audit found that although some early project proposals were a standard response to an emergency situation, procedures generally enabled projects to be modified to meet evolving needs. There is scope to develop information on the costs of comparative goods and services, to provide more details of organisational arrangements and to quantify the achievement of project outputs.

As regards project results and sustainability, some project outputs have been less than planned due to inflation and difficulties in obtaining goods and in recruiting qualified staff. However, projects managed by DG ECHO's partners have helped to meet the basic needs of the population in terms of shelter, food, water and sanitation, health, psychosocial support, child and family care and telecommunications. The Commission is also financing projects to support disaster preparedness. The high level of funding enabled the Commission to bridge the longer than expected transitional phase between relief and rehabilitation through quality interventions and to fund rehabilitation projects with a development orientation. However, in terms of beneficiaries reached, the success of projects was sometimes less than initially planned, mainly due to an overestimation in the needs assessments.

On the basis of its observations the Court recommends that:

  • - 
    the Commission should consider the role it could play in helping affected governments to manage donor coordination more effectively;
  • - 
    the roles of DG ECHO and DG Environment (Civil Protection Mechanism) should be clarified to ensure a coherent approach;
  • - 
    a longer timeframe for emergency operations should be considered in order to provide sufficient time for implementation;
  • - 
    DG ECHO should strengthen its monitoring system in order to include written feedback to partners following monitoring visits, the development of comparative cost information, an explanation of the implementing arrangements and information on what has been done where;
  • - 
    the difficulties of access to documentation of projects implemented by some UN organisations should be taken into account in future discussions in the context of the Financial and Administrative Framework Agreement.

Special Report No 3/2006:

http://www.eca.europa.eu/audit_reports/special_reports/docs/2006/rs03_06en.pdf

 

1The sole purpose of this Information note is to provide a summary. The Special Report as adopted by the Court of Auditors, is available on the court's website (http://www.eca.europa.eu) and will shortly be published in the C series of the Official Journal of the European Union.

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