2 The EU’s Humanitarian Aid Policy after Lisbon: Implications of a New Treaty Basis

Humanitarian Aid as an Integral Part of theEuropeanUnion's External Action: The Challenge of Reconciling Coherence and Independence

“…The pursuit of coherence is particularly challenging and potentially problematic for humanitarian aid policy because of the stated objective of independence. It remains contested whether the independence of humanitarian aid has been reinforced through the insertion of a separate chapter in the Lisbon Treaty (Van Elsuwege & Orbie, ) or whether the EU's quest for more coherence would lead to the subordination of the humanitarian imperative to overriding security, development, and trade goals (as feared by some NGOs).…”

EU Humanitarian Aid after the Lisbon Treaty

“…The European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps has been subject to criticism – in particular from the non‐governmental organization (NGO) community. According to Van Elsuwege and Orbie (), ‘the NGO community fears that [the creation of the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps] may undermine the increasing professionalism in the humanitarian aid sector potentially leading to dangerous situations in conflict areas. In general, there is a feeling that this initiative may be used as a promotional tool to increase the visibility of the EU's humanitarian actions.…”

“…With the creation of the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) in 1992, a much more streamlined approach was adopted . The creation of DG ECHO led to a concentration of activities that previously had been carried out by several different Commission services, such as humanitarian assistance, emergency food aid, and prevention and disaster preparation activities (Khaliq, ; Van Elsuwege & Orbie, ).…”

“…European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid, paragraphs 10–14. Van Elsuwege and Orbie () take the view that ‘The notion of independence … may be considered as a “derived principle” insofar as its substance, i.e., the autonomy of humanitarian objectives from political, military or economic influences, follows from the other principles’. The present author takes the view that there may be situations where the principle of independence is more than merely a ‘derived principle’.…”

“…But see the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid paragraph 30, which refers to ‘policy coherence’, and paragraph 84, which refers to ‘coherence in Community policies’. According to Van Elsuwege and Orbie (), the requirement in Article 214(1) that ‘[t]he Union's operations in the field of humanitarian aid shall be conducted within the framework of the principles and objectives of the external action of the Union’ may be construed as an obligation to pursue coherence. In the present author's view, such construction would seem to imply that the EU's humanitarian aid policy must adapt to other external Union policies, whereas it is not equally obvious that other external Union policies shall adapt to the Union's humanitarian aid policy.…”