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COM (85) 335 
 
 
 
Vol. 1985/0 135 
  
 
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concernant l'ouverture au public des archives historiques de la Communauté économique 
européenne et de la Communauté européenne de l'énergie atomique (JO L 43 du 15.2.1983, 
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In accordance with Council Regulation (EEC, Euratom) No 354/83 of 1 February 1983 
concerning the openi ng to the public of the historical archives of the European Econom ic 
Community and the European Atomic Energy Communit y (OJ L 43, 15.2.1983, p. 1), as 
amended by Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1700/2003 of 22 September 2003 (OJ L 243, 
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file have been declassified in conformity with Article 5 of the aforementioned regulation.  
In Übereinstimmung mit der Verordnung (EWG, Euratom) Nr. 354/83 des Rates vom  1. 
Februar 198 3 über die Freigabe der historischen Archive der Europäischen  
Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft und der Europäischen Atomgem einschaft (ABI. L 43 vom  15.2.1983,  
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COMMISSION O F THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
COM(85)335 final 
Brussels, 21 June 19^5
f l l O S
FAMINE' IN; AFRICA
Commission communication\\%jb ^he EurÔpean Council,  
Milan, 28/29 June 1985
COM(85)335 final

û s
lOYY) P -
FAMINE IN AFRICA
Commission communication to the European Council
1.  According to the latest information available the most  
urgent food needs of the twenty African countries worst
affected by drought appear to be covered.
The European Community has contributed substantially to  
this work of international solidarity by pledging to supply  
2.3 mn tonnes cereal equivalent to the drought-stricken  
countries of Africa. It has made a special push to help  
the eight hardest-hit countries: to date, 65 % of the Dublin  
Plan aid ( 1,232,000 tonnes cereal equivalent) has already been  
distributed or is in process of being provided by the Commission  
and the Member States.
The Commission has, like the Member States, coupled its  
emergency food aid with various operations to tackle other  
emergency-related needs (health) and restart productive  
activities (seed, use of local resources and labour, &c.).
2.  But while in terms of overall commitments food requirements  
appear to be covered, major problems have arisen in the
implementation of international aid which in some cases still  
persist. These concern
(i) coordinating the incoming consignments of aid from  
the different donors;
(ii) getting the aid to the end consumers, which has not  
always been managed;
(iii) doing more to cope with the additional needs in  
connection with health and with malnutrition.

It must further be stressed that the present tragedy has  
been worsened by the ongoing economic situation in these countries,  
which are becoming less and less able to meet their food require­
ments .
In face of all this it is clearly necessary to establish  
for the future an overall Community-level short- and long-term  
anti-drought strategy.
3. Short-term action should have three main aims: to get
emergency food aid to the starving as soon as possible,  
to keep them from moving away from the areas where they pursue  
their productive occupations, and to provide them with the  
means to resume a normal life.
As concerns emergency food aid, it should be a priority to  
improve the early warning system for detecting production shortfalls  
beforehand. This will necessitate strengthening the relevant  
services in the countries concerned, and developing remote­
monitoring systems covering the whole of Africa. Here it is  
important that the interested parties (the EEC, the Member States  
and the recipient countries) should work in better coordination  
to determine and select the most appropriate systems, and set to  
to introduce them.
Secondly, it is vital to get the food faster to the people  
who need it, using in the first instance the food and transport  
resources available on the spot or in adjacent countries. To do  
this it will be necessary for the donors in future to earmark  
appropriate funds.
With this in view the Commission has already decided to  
propose in its preliminary draft 1986 Budget a special reserve  
appropriation to enable 500,000 tonnes cereal equivalent to be  
mobilized over and above the regular food aid amounts should  
more famine situations develop.

Thirdly, the resources must be assembled to enable aid to  
be delivered to destination in the case of those Member States  
which do not do this.
Lastly, decision-making procedures on the allocation of  
food aid must be simplified and speeded up.
Given the obvious need to expand emergency resources and  
streamline their deployment, it would be well to establish a  
separate, decentralized European emergency aid facility based  
on a crisis management staff backed by a permanent Commission  
unit to be responsible for the organized, pre-established  
coordination of all the funds made available to the Member  
States and the Commission.
k. For the purposes of immediate restarting of economic
activity, emergency aid will need to be accompanied by  
the provision of aid essential to the resumption of agricultural  
production. To this end action should be taken to mobilize all  
Community and Member State resources still available for  
programmes of quick-disbursement operations, and consideration  
given now to what special extra resources could be deployed in  
case of need.
5·  As concerns the long term, it is absolutely essential that  
the African countries replan their internal food-security  
policies and mount environmental conservation programmes.
Food security is a goal written into Lomé III, and the  
Member States would do well to give priority, along with the  
Commission, to assistance for food-security policy in their  
national aid programmes, in order to reach the financial  
critical mass together.
As for environmental conservation, and in particular the  
combating of desertification, given the scale of the need quite  
obviously all European aid, Community and bilateral, will have t  
give this a high priority, to continue for a long time and to be  
so organized as to ensure properly coherent operations through  
appropriate coordination machinery.
/·/ «

Notwithstanding the worsening food situation and the present  
horrors, Africa as a whole is not ineluctably doomed to be unable  
to feed itself. For their part, the Community and the Member  
States, which account for something like 55% °f the structural  
aid supplied to Sahelian Africa, have a major responsibility to  
it. Given these two facts, it is apparent that the Community and  
the Member States must undertake to implement the measures planned  
to tackle the emergency, restart agricultural production and  
attack the root causes that make these countries so vulnerable to  
the effects of drought, in order to ensure that calamities such as  
the one the world has just witnessed never happen again.
7.  Conclusions
To make Community aid more effective, it is proposed that  
an overall anti-drought strategy be mounted by action
(i) to improve early warning systems by better coordination and  
stepping-up of European efforts in this connection with a  
view to such systems' covering the whole of Africa;
(ii) to help the stricken countries mobilize and maintain
all their means of transport— but some countries are so  
poorly off for road and rail transport that the best course  
would be to have Community transport available to get the  
food through in time;
(iii) to streamline the machinery for action, in particular by  
establishing a permanent crisis-management staff of the  
Member States, with its coordinating centre at the Commission  
organized around the existing crisis unit;
(iv) to help the restarting of economic activities in the
stricken countries in 1986 (e.g. by funding input import  
programmes), and in the longer term the carrying-out of  
agri-food development and environmental conservation  
programmes, by drawing up a coherent and coordinated  
European programme in each of the countries asking for  
the Community's assistance in this connection.