PHL rejects €6.1-M EU trade-related assistance

The Philippines has formally declined to accept €6.1 million or around P380 million in aid from the European Union (EU), EU Ambassador to the Philippines Franz Jessen confirmed on Wednesday.

“It was formalized after they returned the financial agreements of the TRTA that should be signed by end of the year,” Jessen told GMA News Online in a phone interview.

The TRTA or Trade-Related Technical Assistance the Philippine government discontinued is the fourth in a series, which the “EU has been supporting for a decade,” Jessen noted.

During a forum in Manila, the EU envoy said the TRTA that the Philippines rejected at the end of 2017 amounted to €6.1 million.

“The TRTA is an EU-funded project for the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) to help finance its programs for capacity development, help them organize trade conferences,” Jessen said.

He said the Philippines is also about to reject around €40 million in aid for renewable energy projects, particularly for constructing solar power plants in Mindanao.

“The next that could be rejected are renewable energy-related aid amounting to around €40 million ... This is for building solar power in Mindanao,” Jessen said.

In October last year, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said the Department of Foreign Affairs will formally convey to the EU the government’s decision to decline aid from the political and economic union of member states.

President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly lambasted the EU for attaching conditions to its assistance, such as imposing human rights regulations in exchange for money.

During the forum in Manila, Janssen said the Philippine government rejected the assistance due to words like “rule of law,” “democracy,” and “human rights” in the TRTA documents.

Nevertheless, Jessen said the EU respects the decision.

“We respect their decision. It’s important that we don’t have any misunderstanding, but it’s, at the end of the day, for them to decide,” he said. —VDS, GMA News