DEVELOPMENT-EU: Declining Level of Aid 'Dangerous'

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Apr 9 2008 (IPS) - European Commission President José Manuel Barroso has described declining levels of development assistance from rich to poor countries as "dangerous".

New data indicates that the amount of aid donated by Europe fell during 2007 for the first time since 2000.

Between 2006 and last year, European aid dropped from almost 48 billion euros (76 billion dollars) to 46 billion euros. This included substantial reductions in real terms to the aid administered by three of the wealthiest EU countries, France, Britain and Germany, all of which also belong to the Group of Eight (G8) elite.

Aid levels shrank by 29 percent in the case of Britain, 16 percent in the case of France and almost four percent in the case of Italy.

The data was gathered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, which is tasked with monitoring the aid performances of industrialised countries. It found that the main explanation for the decreases is that debt relief packages introduced in 2005 and 2006 – primarily for Nigeria and Iraq – had been "exceptionally high".

Responding to the OECD findings Apr. 9, Barroso said that they show "some worrying and even dangerous tendencies."

The fact that aid administered by the U.S. and Japan had also fallen "might be comforting to some in political terms," he added. "But it is not to me, and it is not to the Commission."

Barroso argued that pledges made by 15 of the European Union's 27 governments to allocate at least 0.7 percent of their gross national income to development aid by 2015 must be honoured. Otherwise, the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals of substantially reducing the most extreme forms of poverty by 2015 will not be attained. "The millennium development goals must not be seen as abstract promises," Barroso added.

So far the only EU countries to have reached or exceeded the 0.7 percent target are the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg. Barroso has called on the remaining 11 to come forward with a blueprint spelling out the precise increases to their aid that they envisage over the next seven years. This issue is to be discussed by EU governments in June.

The Commission also undertook to examine the impact on poor countries of the EU's decision to derive 10 percent of the energy needed to power cars and other modes of transport from biofuels by 2020.

But Barroso refused to accept that the growing use of arable land for the cultivation of energy crops, rather than food, is a key factor behind the rise in food prices that has sparked concerns of worsening hunger in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Arguing that the reasons for price hikes are "very complex", he suggested that export restrictions imposed by major cereal producers Russia and Ukraine may be culpable, rather than biofuels. Although he argued that criteria are needed to ensure that biofuels are cultivated in a way that takes heed of social and ecological concerns, he claimed that the EU should "remain attached" to its objectives as the alternative would be to continue running cars on pure petrol, thereby aggravating climate change.

The campaign group ActionAid has called on the EU to prioritise the fight against hunger. It complained that an EU strategy paper known as Advancing African Agriculture lacks details on how assistance can be given to poor farmers.

"The current food crisis serves as a reminder of how far we are from delivering the goal of halving hunger by 2015," said ActionAid's Ivy Kakiiza. "In Africa, hunger is actually rising. More than 40 percent of Africans cannot even get enough food on a daily basis."

Oxfam argued that the EU's credibility will be seriously eroded if its governments do not redouble efforts to increase aid levels.

"Europe has committed many times in the past to increasing its aid," said Luis Morago, head of Oxfam's Brussels office. "Unless a massive improvement is seen in 2008, there's no way that Europe's targets to reduce poverty – such as reducing maternal mortality or the number of men and women living in extreme poverty – will be met."

Despite the overall reductions, increases in the quantity of aid given by some EU countries were registered. According to the OECD, Germany saw a rise of 6 percent in 2007, Spain 34 percent, Austria 8 percent, and Ireland and Finland about 5 percent each.

Olivier Buston from the organisation Debt AIDS Trade Africa (DATA) said that some EU countries are "free-loading on the backs of others.

"There is a serious weakness in the current structure of aid pledges, which is that we lack clear timetables to achieve them," he added. "EU members have made promises but all we have from most of them is their word. These words must be backed by firm budget allocations by specific dates."