The European Union announced on Monday that is offering more than €400m to Haiti in humanitarian aid and longer-term assistance.
The funds consist of €122m in immediate aid from the European Commission and the bloc’s 27 member-states, €107m for short-term rehabilitation and reconstruction, and about €200m to help Haiti rebuild in the medium to long-term.
In addition, EU heads of government will broaden the agenda of an economic policy summit planned for February 11 in Brussels to discuss reconstruction efforts and EU support for a proposed international donor conference on Haiti.
Karel De Gucht, the EU’s outgoing commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, is to visit Haiti on Wednesday. On the same day, Britain’s Lady Ashton, who is in charge of EU foreign policy, will visit Washington for talks with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and New York to confer with Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general.
EU leaders, speaking after an emergency meeting of the bloc’s foreign affairs council on Monday, said they anticipated that several European governments would send specially trained police forces to Haiti to help maintain security as foreign aid pours in.
The policemen will come from the European Gendarmerie Force, a unit set up in 2006 to improve the EU’s crisis management capabilities.
“There is an urgent need for greater security to make it easier for international assistance to be distributed,” said Miguel Ángel Moratinos, foreign minister of Spain, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
He said he expected that about 150 gendarmes would be despatched to Haiti.
However, he rejected suggestions from a French official that US military control of Port-au-Prince’s airport was hampering the aid effort. “We should thank the US administration for making sure the airport is working,” said Mr Moratinos.
Lady Ashton said she had no reason to think that NGOs felt the aid effort in Haiti was being disrupted by the arrival of too many high-profile foreign dignitaries in the capital and its airport.
“I’ve had no complaints of any kind from NGOs,” said Lady Ashton. “We’ve respected what the United Nations asked us to do, which was not to go to the region immediately.”
The EU leaders said one of their greatest concerns was the earthquake’s destruction of the Haitian state’s basic administrative capacities.
“We will send a team of EU experts to assess the most critical needs of the Haitian state and civil administration. This is about the physical devastation of the state structure and the fact that a lot of high officials are missing,” said Mr De Gucht.
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