The European Commission is privately threatening to stop propping up the 79-member Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States amid concerns of financial mismanagement, just months after signing a new 20-year partnership with the group.
In a March 13 letter to OACPS Secretary-General Georges Chikoti, seen by Devex, Koen Doens, the director-general of the commission’s department for international partnerships, wrote that the commission would honor its “political commitment” to contribute to the operating cost of the OACPS’ Brussels-based secretariat of roughly 50 staff, but only if the group presented cost-cutting plans to redress its “critical and fragile'' financial situation by the end of March 2024.
“[As] Authorising Officer for the EU budget managed by DG INTPA [the commission’s development department], it is my responsibility to protect the financial interests of the European Union and to put in place all the necessary controls to ensure that public money is spent in full respect of the EU's financial regulation,” Doens wrote. “Despite repeated requests (orally and in writing) for transparency on the current financial situation of the OACPS Secretariat and its viability in the short to medium term, we still lack vital information.”