A six-member delegation of Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee will visit Haiti on 23 and 24 February to look into the management of EU funds for reconstruction and humanitarian aid, released after January 12, 2010. The European Commission pledged €522 million at the International Donor Conference in New York in March 2010, of which €395 million have been committed so far and the payments made until the end of 2011 amount to €210 million.

The delegation will meet politicians, officials involved in managing the funds, and also representatives of NGOs, international finance institutions and the UN. MEPs will also visit a training center for the management of major natural hazards, and the IDP camp of the Champ de Mars.

The visit comes just a month after the adoption of a critical report on EU humanitarian aid management, prepared by one of the delegation members, Martin Ehrenhauser (non-attached, Austria).

In their resolution, MEPs called for more efficiency and less bureaucracy in aid management by the Commission's Humanitarian Aid Directorate-General (DG ECHOE) while at the same timing ensuring a high level of accountability and transparency of humanitarian aid. They pointed - as on other occasions - to weaknesses in transparency, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness of UN management of EU funds.

The delegation's findings will feed into the annual discharge report on Commission spending and the discharge of the European Development Funds.

Composition of the delegation :

Ingeborg Grässle, German MEP member of the European People's Party (EPP) will lead the European Parliament delegation that will also include the French deputy Jean-Pierre Audy (European People's Party), the German MEP Jens Geier (Group of Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament), the member Bulgarian Ivailo Kalfin (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament), the Polish MEP Ryszard Czarnecki (European Conservatives and Reformists) and MP Martin Ehrenhauser (Not enrolled).

HL/ HaitiLibre