16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

Administrative Issues 45
aged to do that. British Council explicitly pointed out that it offered advisement to
agencies for fellows that might have disabilities.
Intervention by Mr. Thierry Coppin, Belgium Technical Cooperation (BTC)
155. Mr. Coppin explained that BTC organized training courses in both English and French
for short and long-term durations on a Master’s degree or PhD; currently, BTC had 300
to 400 PhD fellowships in progress. The programme was set out for four years of which
16 months were spent in Belgium. The rest of the study time was spent in the home
country or its immediate vicinity. BTC also ran South-South projects. Twenty-three local
antennas of BTC were in charge of organizing the local South-South programmes. In
that regard, BTC was pursuing a triangular approach where the North could learn from
the South-South organizations. A case in point was the Medical Institute of Antwerp
which drew from the expertise and experience of partners in the South with regard to
sleeping sickness, malaria and other diseases.
Intervention by Mr. Bertrand Sulpice, Development Director, Centre français pour l’accueil
et les échanges internationaux (EGIDE)
156. For the past 45 years, EGIDE had been managing French Government international
programmes which involved visits to France by foreign scholarship holders, in particular,
fellows originating from African countries. Ninety percent of the programmes were
conducted on a bilateral basis. Multilateral agreements existed with the European Commission
and IAEA. Core activities consisted of logistics, administrative and financial issues
such as paying stipends, organizing housing and insurance, and assisting with visas.
With respect to the latter, Mr. Sulpice noted that it was only natural that organizations
like EGIDE whose mission was to promote mobility to France did not weigh much with
the Ministry of Interior or the Ministry of Justice which tried to narrow the frontiers for
immigrants. If EGIDE knew of fellows applying for visas to France it informed the relevant
Consulates by fax and eased the issuance of visas due to the credibility the agency
had gained over time. Mr. Sulpice pointed out that there were no statistics available on
the percentage of fellows who actually faced visa problems. Experience showed that most
of the fellows received their visas easily. Referring to the concern expressed by previous
speakers, Mr. Sulpice acknowledged that indeed each agency experienced some problems
with visas. However, he was not sure whether the majority of the visa applicants failed
to obtain them. He also underlined that visa problems existed for Europeans traveling
to Southern countries, as well. Every year around 40,000 people received some sort of
assistance by EGIDE’s 200 staff members on behalf of the financing institutions of the
French Government.
157. Mr. Sulpice touched upon the issue of stipend versus salary which has become prevalent
in France nowadays. All UN agencies provided fellows with stipends intended to
cover board, lodging and incidental expenses. In 2005 the European Commission introduced
the European Charter for Researchers which facilitated mobility and research