Urpilainen: EU aid, tricky partners, and a possible return to Finland

When Jutta Urpilainen of Finland was nominated to lead the European Union’s development work in 2019, the foreign aid crowd in Brussels was relieved for two reasons. She was not from Hungary, whose anti-migration government had been rumored to be in consideration to be allocated the post. And as a former finance minister, the hope was that she would be adept at fighting her corner in funding battles, all while navigating the complex architecture of European development finance. Now, halfway through her term, the EU commissioner for international partnerships has been in office for the approval of the bloc’s 2021-2027 external action instrument, worth €79.5 billion; the negotiation of a partnership agreement with 79 African, Caribbean, and Pacific states; an institutional “beauty contest” between the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; and the launch of “Team Europe” initiatives aiming to give more coherence and visibility to the European Commission and member states’ work in Africa. She spoke with Devex in her office in Brussels this week. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Is your job fun? Sometimes it can seem like a lot of 3 p.m. webinars about green or digital jobs and growth. But behind the scenes, you have been navigating a complex programming process and meeting presidents. I wanted to start by asking your overall impressions of the job. That's a good question. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes not. But I think what is the most important thing for me is that I feel that this is a meaningful job, and I can really make an impact through this job. The reason why I wanted to become a politician was that I really wanted to fight inequalities; this was a big narrative for me. No one chooses where he or she is born, what kind of background you get, what kind of family, parents. And I thought that this is my thing, fighting inequalities. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that a person who has been active in development cooperation, in NGOs and civil society organizations, then become a politician, being active also in different international topics, suddenly gets this kind of opportunity to be a commissioner for international partnerships. It's complicated to try to negotiate with different institutions and member states, and also, of course, it's not always very easy to cope with some of the partner countries: We know Ethiopia, we know now Mali, we know Sudan, and so forth. But every day when I come to work, I can have this very strong feeling that what I do can really make an impact. On Afghanistan, you told the European Parliament recently that you intend to keep €400 million to €500 million “in our pockets” to see how the situation evolves. When one hears about the level of needs in Afghanistan, the person on the street may ask why now is the time to keep half a billion euros in one’s pockets. What is your response? First of all, there are always more needs than resources, and I think here you can see my background as a former finance minister. What I really miss is at least a midterm, three-to-four-year kind of strategy for Afghanistan. Everybody's focusing on the very urgent, acute crisis in the country, which I in a way understand, because we know that people are dying and children are starving. And of course, we need to help. But on the other hand, I personally think that the whole international community — including the EU, but also some other international actors — should have a joint plan for that country. What kind of future do we want to support? And how much are we able to engage with the Taliban, for instance? In a way, I feel that there is no common solution or strategy for that country. I said that we want to keep €500 million in our pocket, because the EU’s resources are limited. We have a cushion for some unexpected purposes, but it's also limited. So we also need to plan our activities so that we can have financing for seven years. Of course, we could use the whole €1 billion now in the beginning of the financial cycle. But without any strategy for that country, what can we do then after three years? I think the needs will still be there, to be very honest. But we would not be able to help because we would not have the money. There's a Finnish presidential election in 2024. Can you rule out running? Are you committed to serving your full term as commissioner? I'm very committed to this position. And to be very honest, I have not thought about the candidacy yet. I have, of course, received requests — maybe that's too strong a word, but asks and hopes and questions a lot from Finland — but I have always answered that we still have two years to go to that election. So the time is not now to take this kind of a decision of whether to be a candidate or not. And of course, in the end, it's not only about me; it's of course about the political party I represent but also, I would say, the broader situation in society. But I'm very committed, I'm very motivated to continue as a commissioner and also feel that I have only achieved the first half of my mandate. And so I think that this is a very hypothetical discussion. Education is one of your top priorities. Yet one of the major tools in your funding arsenal is budget guarantees, which rely on development banks finding profitable projects that the commission then de-risks by partially guaranteeing the bank, should it lose money. That implies profit-making projects, so how will this tool be used to help the public education system in partner countries? We don't know yet exactly how many proposals we will get for education. And to be very honest, from the beginning, I was a bit hesitant on that. I thought — exactly for the reasons you just explained — is it really wise to have this window for human development guarantees? And I had very direct discussions with my department on that. There was a time when I told them that “no, we don't move forward on this” because they wanted to do it even earlier. I still have a lot of question marks when it comes to education, so I think we have to be very careful on that. It's not as obvious as health, and I think that we have to see what kind of proposals [from the development finance institutions] we will get on education. I think mainly there might be proposals relating to vocational education and training. And that's also one of the priorities among African leaders. But how to organize that, and what is the role of the companies there — we really have to study that carefully. So I would say that the creation of the human development window for [budget guarantees] does not predict that there will be a lot of projects relating to education. Samantha Power, administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said recently that Rwanda is not a democratic country. Yet Rwandan President Paul Kagame is one of the main interlocutors for the EU as it tries to rejuvenate its partnership with Africa. Why? I come from the country I know best, Finland. And because of our history and very specific and special relationship with Russia, my understanding is that you need to have a dialogue and you need to engage with everybody. Even though, let's say for instance in Ethiopia, you don't really agree on something, you still need to have a dialogue, you need to engage in order to also understand what is their thinking, but of course, also to express our position. Everything we do is based on values. The European Union is a community of values. So of course, everything we do in our partner countries is also linked to our values. I think that if you have a real partnership, then you can also discuss difficult topics — not in public, of course. As a former politician, I also understand that it's probably not the right way to raise difficult issues. But you need to have engagement, you need to have a dialogue in order to also raise those issues which might be difficult for your partner, but also where you might disagree.