Transparency Initiative (EITI)

18 Introduction
2.2 THE ROLE OF GERMANY
The German government considers the EITI as an anchor
point for engaging with international partners around the
world to strengthen good governance in the extractives
sector. With regard to defining a strategy within the portfolio
of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and
Development (BMZ), it is formulated in sector (BMZ, 2010)
and several country policies that partner countries use
their resource endowments to foster sustainable development.
Broadly this means that countries are looking to ensure
that revenues benefit the population at large and that
resource extraction is socially and environmentally acceptable.
Furthermore, in order for the extractives sector to
become a driver of broader employment and growth, linkages
between major projects in the sector and the local
economy must be established.
In principle, BMZ policies link the EITI transparency
agenda to Good Financial Governance (GFG) and
economic and social reform agendas. This means that
support of the EITI is geared towards framing it in Public
Financial Management (PFM), as well as more specific
good governance interventions such as the Open Data
Movement, the Tax Justice Movement (e.g. on transfer
pricing issues), the Addis Ababa Action Agenda’s Domestic
Resource Mobilization (DRM) program, although the
linkages vary depending on the country context. The EITI
plausibly contributes to the Sustainable Development
Goal (SDG) 17 (“Partnerships for the Goals – Strengthen
the means of implementation and revitalize the global
partnership for sustainable development”) among others
(CCSI 2016, p. 66-68).
Bank managed EITI Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) (2004
until 2015), and since then Component I of the Extractives
Global Programmatic Support (EGPS).
In 2014, Germany started domestic implementation and
since February 2016, Germany is an EITI candidate, aiming
to become EITI compliant in 2018. This step was taken in
coordination with the G7. Among the countries that make
up the G7, EU and OECD, the EITI is implemented by:
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three of the G7 member states (43%)
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two of the 28 EU member states (7%)
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four of the 35 OECD member states (11%)
A growing number of industrialized nations are participating
in the EITI: Great Britain since October 2014, the USA
since March 2014; Norway has been a member since 2011;
and other countries have announced an intention to implement
the EITI, including Australia, the Netherlands, France
and Italy. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China
and the Republic of South Africa) have long been a focus of
EITI advocacy and outreach, but thus far none of them have
chosen to implement the EITI.
In a whole-of-government-approach, the EITI was introduced
to the German Government’s raw materials strategy
in 2012 in terms of "safeguarding of the supply of raw materials
needs to be backed by a committed foreign policy,
external economic policy and development co-operation
policy" (BMWi, 2012: 26). German support has been broadbased
from the very beginning: More than EUR 26 million
have been allocated since 2006, supporting more than 20
national EITI processes through bilateral and regional cooperation,
conducting training for more than 500 change
agents from 44 countries (outreach and implementing
countries), supporting activities under the first EITI Chair
Peter Eigen (2006-2011), funding the International Secretariat
as well as at the multilateral level through the World