Decision on the Scale of Assessment for the Regular Budget and the Peace Fund

DECISION ON THE SCALE OF ASSESSMENT FOR
THE REGULAR BUDGET AND THE PEACE FUND¹

The Assembly,

1. On the Scale of Assessment and Contributions:

1. RECALLS Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.578(XXV), adopted at the 25^th Ordinary Session held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2015, which decided that:

1. a new scale of assessment be adopted based on the principles of solidarity, equitable payments and capacity to pay in a way that ensures no single country bears a disproportionate share of the budget;

2. the scale of assessment will be based on achieving the following targets to be phased over 5 years starting from January 2016:

1. 100% of the Union’s Operational budget;

2. 75% of Union’s Program budget;

3. 25% of Union’s Peace support operations budget.

3. The scale of assessment will be based on a tier system as follows:

1. All countries with a GDP above 4% - tier 1;

2. All countries with a GDP above 1 % but below 4% - tier 2;

3. All countries with a GDP of 1% and below - tier 3.

2. ALSO RECALLS Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.605(XXVII), adopted at the 27^th Ordinary Session held in Kigali, Rwanda, in July 2016, which stated that the Peace Fund shall be endowed with an amount of United States Dollars Three Hundred Twenty Five (USD 325) million in 2017, rising to Four Hundred (400) million in 2020. This total amount shall be raised from equal contributions from each of the five (5) AU Regions, as defined in the relevant instruments;

3. REITERATES Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.605(XXVII),which reaffirmed its determination to ensure that the African Union (AU) is financed in a predictable, sustainable, equitable and accountable manner with the full ownership by its Member States;

4. RECALLS Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.635(XXVIII), adopted at the 28^th Ordinary Session held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2017, which stipulated that the current scale of contributions should be revised based on the principles of ability to pay, solidarity, and equitable burden-sharing to avoid risk concentration;

5. TAKES NOTE of the recommendations of the AU Ministers of Finance during their meeting, held on the 9 August 2017 in Addis Ababa, in which they recommended that, in order to ensure equity and effective risk management, ‘caps’ and ‘minima’ should be introduced in the Scale of Assessment so that every country pays a minimum flat contribution and that no country or group of countries pays more than a specified share of the AU budget;

6. ALSO TAKES NOTE of the Report of the Joint Sitting of the Ministerial Committee on Scale of Assessment and Contributions and the Committee of Fifteen Finance Ministers on the AU Scale of Assessment and Contributions for Period 2020-2022;

7. DECIDES that, while still maintaining the Tier System as per the Johannesburg Decision of 2015 (Assembly/AU/Dec.578(XXV)) and while taking into account the recommendation of the African Union Ministers of Finance to introduce ‘caps’ and ‘minima’, the new scale shall be as follows:

1. Tier 1 assessed at 45.151% percent of the Union’s assessed budget;

2. Tier 2 assessed at 32.749% of the Union’s assessed budget; and

3. Tier 3 assessed at 22.100% of the Union’s assessed budget.

The new scale of assessment and contributions is herewith attached to this decision;

8. ALSO DECIDES that no country shall pay less than $350,000 or more than $35,000,000 as a contribution for the regular budget and peace fund combined;

9. FURTHER DECIDES that with a view to addressing the growing burden to Member States, the 2020 regular budget shall be reduced by $32 million as compared to the 2019 regular budget. The Commission is directed to find savings within the Union budget;

10. MANDATES the Commission to continue the ongoing efforts to consolidate the accountability and oversight mechanism on the AU budget processes and maintain an affordable and rationalized budget of the Union with the view to end its expansion taking into account the need for austerity measures.

2. On the Peace Fund:

11. TAKES NOTE that since 2017, fifty (50) Member States have made their contributions to the Peace Fund on the basis of the existing scale of assessment for the regular budget;

12. COMMENDS Member States for contributing [$89m] to the AU Peace Fund since 2017 which demonstrates a high level of commitment by the Union to fully operationalize the Peace Fund;

13. REQUESTS the AU High Representative for Financing the Union and the Peace Fund, supported by the Commission, to undertake regional consultations on the matter of assessing the Peace Fund and report back to the Executive Council in in Niamey, Niger, in June 2019;

14. DECIDES that, in the interim, the existing scale of assessment as applied to the regular budget of the Union shall be applied to the 2017-2019 assessment of the Peace Fund and, in the event that no concrete recommendations emerge from the consultations, the new scale of assessment as applied for the regular budget shall also be applied to the Peace Fund from 2020-2022².