EPLO MFF STATEMENT
The European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) calls on the European Union (EU) to increase investment in conflict prevention and peacebuilding (CP-PB). The EU has played a critical role in fostering global stability through its support to civil society and locally led initiatives to prevent violence and promote peace. Preventing and addressing violent conflict is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic and economic necessity:
Strategic: The EU’s role as a leading donor and actor in conflict-affected regions is vital for maintaining its influence internationally amid rising challenges. Today’s global landscape is marked by the highest levels of active conflicts since the end of the Second World War. Insufficient peacebuilding efforts have left many conflicts unresolved, with reliance on military responses proving ineffective. Investing in CP-PB fosters stability for all. Even distant conflicts have domestic repercussions, fuelling political polarisation and social tensions. These trends highlight the urgent need for cooperative, comprehensive strategies to address interconnected global challenges.
Economic: Preventing violent conflicts makes economic sense. The cost of violence was EUR 18.2 trillion in 2023, equivalent to 13,5% of the world’s economic activity, or EUR 2 266 per person. Today’s conflicts are disrupting critical supply chains, forcing the displacement of over 117 million people at the end of 2023, exacerbating impacts of the climate crisis, and creating conditions for transnational crime and armed groups to thrive. One quarter of the world’s population live in countries affected by violent conflict, with these countries the furthest behind in progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has demonstrated that investments in prevention yield significant returns in terms of avoiding conflict-related costs, with every EUR 1 invested in peacebuilding saving EUR 16 in costs due to conflict.
Specifically, we call for the EU to:
1. Uphold, at a minimum, the total value of the budget allocation to external action from the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) to post-2027.
- Maintain Heading 6 (Neighbourhood and the World) as distinct from Heading 4 (Migration and Border Management) and 5 (Security and Defence).
- Ensure that greater flexibility in external action is additional to predictable funding.
2. Increase the budget allocations for the Thematic Programme on Peace, Stability and Conflict Prevention.
- Divide the budget of the Thematic Programme equally between the two areas of intervention, CP-PB and crisis preparedness, and global, trans-regional and emerging threats.
- Sustain and enhance the dedicated specialised staffing resources and the multi country, cross-regional approach embedded in the current programme structure.
3. Include conflict prevention and peacebuilding as objectives in all External Financing Instruments (EFIs).
- Include specific objectives for CP-PB into all EFIs, including any successor to the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance.
- For all EFIs, ring-fence funding to CP-PB to ensure that these funds cannot be diverted to serve shifting, short-term political interests.
- Enhance the linkages between flexible crisis response mechanisms and longer term programming.
- Enhance the capacity of EU Delegations and geographic units at headquarters to design and deliver CP-PB initiatives, mirroring the successful approaches used by thematic programmes. This includes ensuring that staff possess the necessary expertise to implement CP-PB effectively.
4. Increase meaningful engagement with and budget allocations to civil society. ○ Increase the overall budget allocations within EFIs for civil society organisations (CSOs).
- Within these allocations, increase the funding available for direct and long-term funding for locally led CSOs.
- Maximise the effectiveness of the EU’s external action by making it a legal requirement to meaningfully engage with civil society in the design and implementation of all external action programming.
5. Ensure that all EU external action is conflict- and gender-sensitive.
- Maintain current commitments to conflict-sensitivity and gender-sensitivity and the use of gender-sensitive conflict analysis screening tools to inform programming.
- Expand the mandatory use and application of these tools to inform programming of all external actions, including the Global Gateway.
- Ensure that these tools are properly resourced throughout EU external action, to enable full and effective implementation.