2015 Volume 2015 Issue 182 Pages 182_71-182_84
This paper specifies factors to make the member states of the European Union (EU) delegate their administrative powers to the European Commission in an area of linkage between its development cooperation policy and common foreign and security policy (CFSP) from the Principal-Agent perspective. The African Peace Facility (APF) that was established in 2004 as a funding instrument to support the African peace and security initiatives is one of the most famous case of the above policy linkage.
The APF’s management mechanism has been constructed through the EU’s inter-institutional negotiations between the Council and the Commission. During the negotiations, there were two main issues in contention. One was whether the APF would be funded through the European Development Fund (EDF) managed by the Commission, or the CFSP budget disbursed on the basis of decisions of the Council. The other was to what extent the Council could be included in the APF’s decision making process.
As a result, the Council accepted the Commission’s proposal that the APF was funded through the EDF, whereas the Commission conceded to the following demands of the Council. 1) The CFSP budget would not be excluded from the APF’s future resources. 2) The APF could be disbursed with approvals of the Council bodies in general process. 3) The commission was required to submit an annual report on the use of the funds to the Council, and to undertake an evaluation reviewing the procedures of the APF.
The fact sheets of the APF funding showed that the Council exploited the Commission’s expertise in managing the aid resources such as the EDF, and that most of the APF was devoted to the military related assistance for which the Council is mainly responsible. These findings suggest that the Council, actually the governments of the member states, takes advantage of the APF to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU’s security and development policy toward Africa.
This paper concludes that the APF’s management mechanism was created as a compromise between the Commission and the Council. Through setting up it, the Commission obtained more discretion to manage the fund, whereas the Council minimised the costs of policy implementation (“the transaction costs”). Moreover, the oversight procedures were applied to the APF financing decisions made by the Commission (“control”). Because the conditions of the Council’s costs and control were satisfied, it agreed to delegate the management power of the APF to the Commission.
