By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Jan 9 2004 (IPS)

Civil society groups are calling for international action to push the Millennium Development Goals higher on the European Union (EU) agenda.

The MDGs are an ambitious agenda agreed by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in New York September 2000.

The eight MDGs provide for eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other serious diseases, improving environmental sustainability, and building a global partnership for development. Specific goals have been set for 2015.

But the World Bank estimates that 40 to 70 billion dollars a year additionally in development aid is needed if the goals are to be reached within the time frame.

The civil society groups are making their call for renewed action as experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank held a meeting in Geneva Thursday and Friday to discuss fresh efforts towards meeting the goals.

The WHO reported that by 2015 not a single country in sub-Saharan Africa will succeed in reducing child mortality by two-thirds, at the current rate of progress.

“There is also the hazard of everyone waiting for everyone else to risk making the first move,” WHO director-general Dr. Lee Jong-Wook told delegates. “We still have time to avoid these pitfalls with the targets for 2015, but to do so we have to act now.”

Simon Stocker from Eurostep, a network of development non-governmental organisations (NGOs) says both the EU and individual member states need to do more.

“It is important that civil society acts towards its own national government, and in the case of the EU towards the European level,” he told IPS. “But in the end it is the political will of the member states to put into place strategies that will best support the achievement of the MDGs.”

The Millennium goal of developing global partnerships for development is the most crucial one, he says. “This is crucial since it is about the role of developed countries in helping to create an enabling environment for development,” he said.

“There needs to be more emphasis on Common Agricultural Policy reform, on increasing levels of Overseas Development Assistance and on reforms to the international trading system that provide real opportunities for developing countries,” Stocker said.

But many NGOs fail to campaign effectively because “there is simply a lack of funds for such an enormous task,” Jo Leadbeater, head of the EU advocacy office of Oxfam International told IPS. “There is also concern that the MDGs are slightly unambitious.”

Oxfam is working to form a coalition with NGOs in the South to make the MDGs more achievable, she says.

Members of many NGOs fear that 2004 will be a challenging year for lobbying the EU on the MDGs because much of the agenda will be taken up by the controversial constitution, institutional reform, enlargement in May, and parliamentary elections in June.

A draft constitution drawn up last year proposes radical changes, including appointment of a European foreign minister to conduct a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Civil society groups fear that this will subordinate aid to foreign and security policy.

“The outcome of the constitutional negotiations are critical in order to guard the space for development policy within the EU,” said Stocker. “So too will be the way in which further reforms are made to EU institutions, particularly the Commission.”

While concerns over the Constitution remain high, Eurostep believes that enlargement and the European elections can also provide a “good opportunity to give focus to the MDGs as a fundamental part of the EU’s global responsibilities.”

Leadbeater says enlargement will mean that the EU will “focus on the near abroad” and that developing countries may be sidelined. But Oxfam is determined to make efforts to “turn that trend around,” she says. “We are fighting a war against poverty and we are determined not to see all of the targets fail.”

The European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the EU, agrees that more needs to be done to achieve the goals.

“We believe that we will not achieve the MDGs within the specified deadline unless increased, accelerated efforts are mobilised in both North and South,” Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, spokesperson for EU Commissioner for Development Poul Nielson told IPS.

The EC is feeling the impact of civil society campaigning, but NGOs should combine their efforts to strengthen their campaigns, he said.

“The Commission believes that civil society is doing a lot to lobby the EU on the MDGs, but often NGOs are concentrating on their own specific sectors in which they take an interest,” he said. “While this effort is important we feel that a broad-based system of lobbying would be more beneficial.”

The EC official said progress will be closely monitored this year to ensure that development policy is not sidelined.

“The 10 new member states joining the EU in May are also 10 new members of the donor community who will contribute to the EU’s development agenda,” he said. “Although their contribution will be smaller than that of existing member states, it will still be positive.”

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