TRIPLE C EVALUATIONS | N 1 Triple C evaluations Complementarity, coordination and coherence are the three key concepts of the articles on development cooperation included in the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht 1992). An evaluation of these concepts, as proposed by the combined evaluation units of the European Commission and member states, should focus on the increased effectiveness of European development cooperation as a result of the implementation of the three Cs in recent years. | This exploratory study investigates how these concepts are applied, what definitions are used nr 1 and how they are embedded in the international legal context. | The Treaty of The Maastricht Treaty and Development Europe’s Co-operation The various forms of complementarity, coordination and coherence are analysed and commented on by a team of distinguished authors from different member states (UK, France and the Netherlands), brought together by Paul Hoebink of the Centre for International Development Issues at the University of Nijmegen. Evaluation Services of the European Union | 2004 ISBN 90-5260-184-4 Distributed in North America by Transaction Publishers Development co-operation | 2004 The Treaty of Maastricht and Europe’s Development Co-operation ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS EVALUATION SERVICES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION | DECEMBER 2004 The Treaty of Maastricht and Europe’s Development Co-operation Edited by Paul Hoebink Studies in European Development Co-operation Evaluation No 1 European Union Brussels, December 2004 Colofon Studies in European Development Cooperation Evaluation is a series of evaluations commissioned by the combined evaluation bureaus of the European Commission and the Member States of the European Union. They are published - on an irregular basis - to inform the interested European audience on results of Europe’s development co-operation. The content of these studies does not necessarily reflect the ideas of the European Commission or the governments of the Member States. European Union December 2004 ISBN 90-5260-184-4 Bookdesign: Jean Cloos Art Direction bv BNO, the Hague Published in 2005 by Aksant Academic Publishers, Cruquiusweg 31, NL-1019 AT Amsterdam, www.aksant.nl II Evaluating Triple C Contents Preface V Paul Hoebink: Evaluating Maastricht’s Triple C: An introduction to the development paragraphs of the Treaty on the European Union and suggestions for its evaluation 1 Paul Hoebink: From ‘particularity’ to ‘globality’: European development cooperation in a changing world 25 Nico Schrijver: ‘Triple C’ from the perspective of international law and organisation: Comparing the League of Nations, United Nations system and the European Union experiences 63 Lisa Dacosta, Yannick Jadot, Alice Sindzingre: Complementarity of European Union Policies on Development Co-operation: First elements of analysis and recommendations for an evaluation 97 Gerard Gill and Simon Maxwell: The co-ordination of development co-operation in the European union 135 Paul Hoebink: Evaluating Maastricht’s Triple C: The ‘C’ of Coherence 183 III IV Evaluating Triple C Preface The 1992 Treaty on European Union, popularly known as the Maastricht treaty, established the legal basis for the formation of a European Union. Among articles relating to citizenship, monetary policy, and the common foreign and security policy; general principles for the member states’ and the union’s development co-operation were laid down. These were summed up in the so-called ‘three Cs’; complementarity, co-ordination, and coherence. In October 2000, the heads of the evaluation services of developmental co-operation from the member states and the European Commission decided to assess the extent to which these principles were being upheld, and what their effect had been on the quality of development co-ordination. Had the ‘three Cs’ managed to take the step from treaty text to actual practice? Due to the complexity of the subject, this evaluative process has involved a number of stations: The first task was thus an attempt to define the key concepts of complementarity, coherence, and co-ordination, as well as to assess the inter- national legal environment in which they were supposed to function. These four studies were expertly performed by a team under the leadership of Paul Hoebink of Nijmegen University, and were separately published as working documents by the Netherlands’ Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB). The subsequent process has proven the usefulness and importance of these preparatory studies. Today, as the first evaluations from this joint initiative are about to be launched, we are drawing on insights gained from these early steps. Furthermore, interest in the ‘three Cs’ initiative appears to have grown beyond the original group of participants, and development co-operation practitioners are showing an increasing interest in these three concepts and the principles that they entail. For that reason, the Task Force of the ‘three Cs’ evaluation has deci- ded to publish undated versions of these four background studies, along with an additional chapter by Paul Hoebink on the background to the ‘three Cs’ initiative itself. While the authors of the following chapters alone should be credited with their content, it is a pleasure for me to present this collection of papers, and to hope that it will continue to contribute to the discussion concerning these prin- ciples. Stockholm, December 2004 Eva Lithman, Chair of the Task Force for the evaluation of the Three Cs. Preface V * Dr. Paul Hoebink is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for International Development Issues (CIDIN) of the Catholic University in Nijmegen. His main subjects of research are development policy and coopera- tion. He has published widely on aid policies and aid effectiveness, as well as on policy coherence. VI Evaluating Triple C Evaluating Maastricht’s Triple C: An introduction to the development paragraphs of the Treaty on the European Union and suggestions for its evaluation Paul Hoebink* And then, all of a sudden, they were at the negotiating table, discussed just twice and accepted as the final text in the Treaty on European Union. The three C’s, Triple C, of the Treaty of Maastricht did not incite the fierce debates as, for exam- ple, the foreign and security policy or the tasks and responsibilities of the European Parliament raised. They were just tabled, shortly discussed, minimally amended and accepted. This raises the question, if every actor in the negotia- tions did understand the significance and range of the three C’s. Or, as it is often the case with legal documents, that the significance of this three articles of this multi-interpretable texts became only manifest to all or most of the actors gradu- ally, after some years. The Treaty of Maastricht has been described as an ‘opaque and complicated text’, ‘a document which finally emerged from frantic late-night compromises amongst heads of governments in a relatively obscure Dutch provincial town’.1 Its readability has been described as being similar to a ‘railway timetable’, but most probably all legal texts would by outsiders and by non-legal experts be con- sidered that dull. It might thus not be fair to judge legal texts on their readability, but on the discussions they promote not only among law scholars but also among politicians and an interested audience. In this sense there is little to complain about the Treaty of Maastricht. Many articles have already been written on the treaty and discussion have prolonged into the recent debates on the European Convention. There is no difference here with the development paragraphs of the 1 C.H.Church/D.Phinnemore, European Union and European Community: A Handbook and Commentary on the 1992 Maastricht Treaties. London, Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Evaluating Maastricht’s Triple C 1 treaty. Commission documents, Council discussions and texts from advisory councils of the Member States, all bear proof of the debates anchored on the Triple C of the Treaty of Maastricht. More then ten years after the signature of the Treaty time has come to evalu- ate it and to see what effects it had on European development cooperation. But this evaluation is very complicated and most probably should be split into a series of evaluation studies. It then again is difficult to prioritise the topics and to try to embed the evaluation in a series of changes that are taking place in the organisation of European development cooperation as well as in international processes of change, change in international governance. The evaluation in par- ticular is very complex, because a absolute endless series of actors and stake- holders is involved, in particular in the coherence evaluation. This introduction is meant to summarise backgrounds and options. Presenting the background The production of legal texts is often seen as a logical process in which different actors with full commitment and with all the available rationality in a deliberate negotiating process come to the most precise articles in which the goals and objectives are brought down in clear and transparent yet readable sentences. Reality is often far away from this ideal or model situation. Negotiating processes are most of the time complex, particularly international ones. Actors differ in views and analytical capacities, in attitudes and temperament, in the apprecia- tion of the situation and in negotiating power and capabilities. It is most of the times very difficult to boil down (political) ideas into legal texts. Furthermore there are issues of great interest to everybody and issues that raise the expecta- tions of a single actor only. This all means that legal texts often only get their real meaning and significance when they are used or referred to in daily practice. All this is also the case with the Treaty of Maastricht. Development co-operation was present in the first European ‘Constitution’, the Treaty of Rome, but only in the form of ‘associationism’, an effort to associate former colonies and dependencies to the European market, instigated at that time by France, and to a lesser extent, by Belgium.