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German opposition calls for interest-oriented development policy
The miserly rich
01/2005
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German opposition calls for interest-oriented development policy
The Christian Democrats’ parliamentary group (CDU/CSU) strongly criticises the red-green coalition’s development policy. According to a position paper tabled by CDU/CSU development spokesman, Christian Ruck, the government is making savings on personnel and funding, while at the same time placing “a totally senseless multilateral focus” on development cooperation. Thereby it is apparently accepting the “increasing irrelevance of our valued bilateral implementing organizations”.
The Action Programme 2015 to reduce poverty may be a good approach, Ruck writes, but there is still no firm plan to implement it. Instead the government is trying to “hype up” its contribution to worldwide poverty reduction “by playing games with definitions and statistics”. If it was up to the CDU/CSU, then development policy would focus much more on Germany’s interests in the fields of foreign affairs, security and the economy. To quote Ruck: “The aim of our development policy must also be to fend off threats and improve Germany’s position in the world”.
In a paper on the relationship between security and development policy drawn up by Ruck and CDU/CSU defence spokesman, Christian Schmidt, the opposition goes into details. German security policy and development policy needed coordinated departmental concepts as well as with joint country and regional strategies. But “egocentric departments and personal quarrels between participating ministers” in the red-green coalition are standing in the way of a coherent approach. Ruck and Schmidt claim that such a political approach must also consider which countries “are particularly important to our access to essential foreign markets and raw materials” and “play a fundamental role in securing our energy supply”. The CDU/CSU document does not look for possible points of contention between such an interest-oriented security-development policy and an approach whose focus is on human rights and poverty reduction. (ell)
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