Dear President of the Commission, where is human development in the mission letter to the INTPA Commissioner-designate?
Following the announcement by President von der Leyen of the next College of Commissioners on September 17th, each Commissioner-designate received a mission letter, reflecting the ambitions set out in political guidelines presented in July. As EU Commissioner-designate for International Partnerships, Mr. Jozef Sikela duly received his.
Disappointed by the general content of the mission letter addressed to Mr. Sikela, Global Health Advocates is publishing a revised version, in an attempt to remind EU decision-makers of the raison d’être and ultimate goal of the EU’s international partnership and development policy: reducing poverty, ensuring sustainable development, and promoting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law across the world.
Despite recent communications suggesting that, in recent years, DG INTPA and more generally the EU as a whole have moved from a donor-recipient model towards equal partnerships, we believe the shift has been centered on securing the EU’s geopolitical interests – a reality echoed in the mission letter.
In a time of growing inequalities, we are witnessing a shift in what the primary objective of the EU’s development policy is: from the reduction and eradication of poverty – as outlined in Art. 208 TFEU – to a neocolonial preoccupation with the sourcing of critical raw materials and resources from developing countries.
Four years after the biggest pandemic of the last century, it is disturbing that the word “health” is not mentioned once in the mission letter, considering that there is no better investment than health.