Using Action Grants with national public bodies from partner countries

Since July 2015, national public bodies from partner countries are considered potential beneficiaries for EU grants. This change was introduced in the last version of the PRAG (article 6.10.3). This means that you won't need to sign financing agreements anymore with these actors. Providing support through grants will now be easier, which may in return facilitate your life.

Allocating Action Grants allows carefully chosen actors to address well defined needs. So far, most beneficiaries of grants were NGOs. However, there have also been cases where grants were allocated to public authorities. This allowed the EU Delegation to have direct access to key actors in the electoral field and therefore benefit from considerable leverage on the electoral reforms agenda. Opting for this aid modality however implies putting a heavy workload upon the EU Delegation shoulders, especially in the 9-6 months period ahead of the elections. Ghana is the best example of such an approach aimed to facilitate national ownership of electoral assistance projects while ensuring EU leading role and visibility throughout the electoral cycle. In 2011-2015, a mix of action grants, service contracts, supplies contracts and contribution agreements was used in this country to support electoral processes: direct grants were chosen to provide funding to the National Commission for Civic education, the Electoral Commission and the National Media Commission, while complementary support (such as procurement of IT equipment, technical assistance) was provided through other means. The coordination of electoral assistance projects developed at national level is ensured by an electoral working group co-chaired by the EU and UNDP under the presidency of the Electoral Commission. All electoral stakeholders are members of this group, including civil society organisations, the police and other donors. At programme level, a steering committee chaired by the Ministry of Finance meets quarterly to further discuss implementation issues and coordinate the activities among the various stakeholders. The EU is an active member of this committee alongside national commissions involved in the electoral process.

It may be interesting to note that in this particular case, action grants were used to provide large amounts of money (up to EUR 3,8 million) over a 36 months period. Since these grants are directly allocated to national authorities, they contribute to developing their capacities, notably in view of the management of donor funds. Such an approach obviously requires that the beneficiaries have the capacities to manage the funds. In Zimbabwe, where an action grant was used in 2013 to provide similar support to the Electoral Commissions Forum of the SACD, the results obtained were far less successful due to the poor capacities of the beneficiary. This underlines the fact that allocating action grants to national authorities must take place in a context where a good partnership has been established between the latter and the EU Delegation, which is not the case everywhere.

Please do not hesitate to share your own experience. Have you tried already using grants with these actors? Would you recommend it? This space is yours.

Florence