EU's Africa fund 'spread too thinly' to reduce migration
Auditors say that the EU's five billion euro Africa fund was "spread too thinly," to address migration, that job creation was overstated and human righs risks were not properly addressed.
In a scathing report, the European Court of Auditors said the European Union’s (EU) €5 billion Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) was "spread too thinly" to address migration as it financed "too broad a range of actions in the areas of development, humanitarian aid, and security."
The fund was created at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015 and intended to address the root causes of instability, irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa. But a year before it lapses, the auditors said it didn’t concentrate "enough on priorities," to tackle the root causes of migration.
The objectives and priorities were "kept as broad as possible, so that most types of actions could be considered eligible."
But some of the projects funded seem to have little to do with migration such as renovation of a Roman theatre in Libya or a radio station in Sahel, the report said.
In key findings the auditors said that the allocation, "was not based on migration-specific indicators such as the number of irregular migrants arriving in the EU," job creation was overstated, and human rights risks were not properly addressed. Furthermore, in some cases there was a risk that increased revenue could have the opposite effect of triggering more migration instead of containing it.
"Substantial increases in revenue may not automatically lead to greater resilience towards irregular migration but may even trigger a risk of realizing 'dormant' plans of irregular migration – due to the high costs involved and due to the strength of the perception of migration as 'the' key to success and a better future," the report explained.
Bettina Jakobsen, the ECA Member in charge of the audit, added that although the EUTF helped to keep migration high on the development and political agenda, there was little change in the "fund’s focus, which remains too broad," despite similar findings in the last report in 2018.
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