Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

Giant and DwarfNo less important development-related interventions are policies related to open markets,accepting immigrants, contributions to security, transfer of technology, support for privateinvestment in impoverished countries and environmental protection policy. Where doSlovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary stand in these areas today? We don’tknow. One of the tasks for our foreign policy should therefore be to become a member ofthe Development Assistance Committee (DAC) within the OECD and to request our inclusioninto the annual assessment of development commitment (CDI). Only after will thepicture of where we stand in these activities be complete and we will open ourselves upto comparison and peer pressure. This is an important tool for improving governance inboth impoverished and wealthy countries. If we remember, South Korea became a memberof the OECD at the same time as most of the countries in the Visegrád Four and has beena DAC member for many years. Korean politicians and the public have known their CDIranking for many years now.The moment we begin to examine development assistance from a wider perspectivewe can see that increasing ODA funding to 0.35 % of GDP may not necessarily be the mostdifficult part: it may be much more difficult to adopt decisions regarding immigrants fromthe countries of the bottom billion or to send our soldiers on peace-creating missions indangerous and inhospitable tropical countries. Despite this, our development impact andparticipation in interventions may be, perhaps in the case of South Sudan, much moreimportant than our “dwarf” support for individual development projects.Another step in transforming Slovakia from a dwarf into a proper development playerin the world is in the internal structure of how Slovak development assistance is allocated.This would mean the following for instance:1. Remove all assistance for the Western Balkans and the “Eastern Partnership” fromthe development assistance budget and from the operating budget for SlovakAid.Support for Serbia and four other smaller countries in the Western Balkans chewedup more than €2 million in 2010 while similar support for the four countries in theEastern Partnership, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Georgia, used more than€1.1 million. Together these moderately wealthy areas accounted for more than halfof Slovakia’s bilateral development assistance. The issue here is not if the SlovakRepublic and other countries in the Visegrád Four should support their neighbours;rather it is just the opposite. It is necessary to openly define that what is recordedas “development assistance” is in reality pre-accession aid within the process ofEuropean integration in the Western Balkans and eventually Moldova, Ukraine andBelarus. Funds dedicated for this assistance cannot be presented as developmentassistance and they must be separated from the development assistance agency.Exactly as in the case of EU PHARE funds which are not a component of EU developmentassistance. It would be more effective to create separate national mechanismssponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or a regional mechanism in a form similarto the Visegrád Fund in order to support these countries.258