The European Commission will spend €271,500 ($294,212) to address concerns about financial management at the 79-member Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States — the Brussels-based development body sustained by millions of euros annually from European taxpayers.
Once the European Union’s main interlocutor on development cooperation in former colonies, OACPS’ say in how and where money is allocated has shrunk to virtually zero in recent years. What’s left is a roughly 50-person secretariat, based in Brussels, that mostly organizes meetings between the group’s various organs and with the EU, despite little buy-in from top political leaders on either side.
A 2021 study for the commission, conducted amid a restructure meant to reinvigorate OACPS, and obtained by Devex through an access to information request, found that “it is complicated to really grasp what the Secretariat is concretely achieving and what is its impact.” OACPS’ last publicly available annual report is for 2021. And in 2022, it suffered a major setback when it lost one of its largest members, South Africa, which exited the group partly on the grounds that the OACPS was superfluous to its relations with the EU.
About the author
Vince Chadwickvchadw
Vince Chadwick is a contributing reporter at Devex. A law graduate from Melbourne, Australia, he was social affairs reporter for The Age newspaper, before covering breaking news, the arts, and public policy across Europe, including as a reporter and editor at POLITICO Europe. He was long-listed for International Journalist of the Year at the 2023 One World Media Awards.
