Technical Seminar on Aid Effectiveness

Dear Colleagues

We would like to confirm that the next Technical Seminar on Aid Effectiveness will take place on 20 and 21 May in Brussels at the Management Centre, Rue de l'Aqueduc 118 in 1050 Brussels (Ixelles).

The Seminar will start on Thursday, 20 May at 2 pm. We expect to finish on Friday by 4 pm. On Thursday night, we would like to invite you to dinner.

Please confirm your attendance at the seminar and at the dinner latest by 18 May to stefania.panaitescu@ec.europa.eu

The main issues of the Seminar will be mutual accountability and division of labour. Please find attached a first draft agenda for your comments and additions.

• On mutual accountability, discussions will focus on measures which could be taken at the country level, international level and with regard to increased transparency.  A revised issues paper will be sent out early next week.
• On cross-country division of labour, we would like a few member states who have been going through a process of concentration to present their strategies. Germany has already volunteered to do so. If you also would like to share and discuss either your ämost recent policy changes, your present policy or even the next steps, please get in touch with Sibylle.tepper@ec.europa.eu.
• On in-country division of labour, we will prepare an overview of where we stand in implementing the operational framework. This we will also circulate within the next week. This concerns action plans, candidates for joint programming, future monitoring. We would like to prepare the next country cases for the DGs meeting and briefly touch on the case of Rwanda.

Please note that we are presently establishing a web group to facilitate the work of the Fast-Track Initiative on Division of Labour. We attach a brief guide on how to register. There will be a quick demonstration of it on Friday, 21 May, over a sandwich lunch. If you don't have the time to register now, we can help you to do this on the margins of the technical seminar.

• This web group can be used to share and discuss documents also in draft. There will also be a calendar. In the group, you will have quick access to all the document of the FTI on Division of Labour so far. So no more lengthy searches in overloaded mailboxes for the documents of the last technical seminar, the last DGs meeting, the monitoring report which you have not had the time to file.
• Access will be limited to the members of the Network of the Fast Track Initiative that are explicitly invited to join. You will not be able to find or access the group by "googling". It is only visible to those members who have been given specific access. It is a so-called "private group".
• As of now, we would like to ask you to join the www.capacity4dev.eu -website, which hosts the DoL group as well as many other groups, as soon as possible and send a quick email to sibylle.tepper@ec.europa.eu once you have done so. Once you have registered for the general website, we can give you access to the DoL group.

We look forward to seeing you in Brussels.

Olivier Luyckx

Draft Agenda

Technical Seminar on Aid Effectiveness: Implementing the Operational Framework

20 and 21 May 2010

MCE Conference Centre, rue de l'Aqueduc 118, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium Tel : + 32 (0)2 543 21 00

http://www.mce-ama.com/contact/route/index.htm

Thursday, 20 May, 2.00-6 pm

2.00 pm                       Mutual Accountability – country level

3.45 pm                       Coffee break

4.00 – 6.00 pm            Mutual Accountability - international

Afterwards: join us for drinks and dinner!

Friday, 21 May, 9.00 am – 4 pm

9.00 am                        Mutual Accountability – transparency

10.45 – 11.00 am        Coffee break

11.00 – 1 pm               Cross country division of labour: Presentation of concentration strategies by Germany, possibly others

1 pm - 2 pm                 Sandwich lunch, presentation of web group "Division of Labour" on www.capacity4dev.eu

2pm - 4 pm:                 In-country division of labour