Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III lambasted the European Union for imposing conditions related to human rights and rule of law on financing agreements with the Philippines.
Dominguez said over the weekend the EU was the only development partner of the Philippines with financing agreement that “explicitly contains provisions that are linked to the national government’s conduct on human rights and rule of law.”
Dominguez quoted the general terms and conditions of the EU financing agreement, especially Article 26.1 which stated it might suspend the financing agreement “if the partner country breaches an obligation relating to respect on human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law, and in serious cases of corruption.”
“Based on the financing grant agreements previously executed by the national government through the DoF [Department of Finance], none of our other development partners around the world have such provisions in their respective financing grant agreements… It’s only the EU not the European countries,” he said.
Dominguez said the Philippine government, through the DoF, continued to deal with European countries such as Austria, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands and Spain and also non-European countries such as Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the United States whose standard financing agreements did not contain such a provision.
Dominguez said if the EU wished to be relevant in development cooperation in the Philippines, “they may opt to deal directly to the beneficiaries by channeling its grants through third party or NGOs such as the Red Cross, provided they do not deal with NGOs or groups linked to terrorists groups or whose aim is to destabilize the state.”
Dominguez, citing the latest available data from the National Economic and Development Authority, said European countries as of June 2017 allocated $112.89 million in grant commitments to the Philippines while some none-European nations committed $1.467 billion.
He said for the European countries, Germany allocated $83.7 million; Spain, $13.06 million; France, $10.48 million; and Italy, $5.61 million.
Dominguez said the government in fact executed a memorandum of understanding with the government of the Netherlands for the formulation of a masterplan for the sustainable development of Manila Bay wherein a total of 1.28 trillion euros grant was provided by the European nation for the purpose.
He said that since July 2017, the government had been in discussions with the EU regarding the amendment of the financing agreements, particularly the provision consistent with the policy of the President.
“During the negotiations, the DoF pushed for parity and respect for our sovereignty. However, EU has stubbornly refused to see our point, choosing to maintain the provision that is unacceptable to President
Rodrigo Duterte,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez said he was clueless on why the EU chose to keep the provision/s that were unacceptable to President Rodrigo Duterte.
“You know all we are saying is that why don’t you just be like everybody else. They don’t put it there. What we can accept is a statement like this: I will give you the grant until it is illegal for me to give you the grant. That is okay because there are some laws in other countries that don’t allow them to give you a grant because of some reasons that is acceptable,” he said.
Dominguez said other countries did not have this clause and that President Duterte’s policy was not to accept this clause because it violates the country’s sovereignty.
The government refused to accept a financial assistance from the EU worth 6.1 million euro or around P380 million last week. EU Ambassador to the Philippines Franz Jessen said in an interview that the government returned the financial agreements of the Trade-Related Technical Assistance that should be signed by end of the year.