DEVELOPMENT: EU States Agree Calendar for Aid Targets

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brian Kenety

BRUSSELS, Nov 9 2001 (IPS) - Top European Union (EU) development officials agreed Thursday to adopt a ‘common calendar’ for the bloc’s members to make good on international promises to raise official development assistance (ODA) to 0.7 percent of gross national product.

At present, there is no formalised or uniform mechanism within the EU to monitor its member states’ efforts to comply with that United Nations target, nor a raft of others meant to halve worldwide poverty by 2015. Only a handful of states are in compliance.

Poul Nielson, the EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said that to date, ODA had “not been a theme for discussion within the context of the European Union as such, or between member states, on what they do and how they perform”.

The World Bank has estimated that a doubling of resources is required if the development goals of the Millennium Summit and other major U.N. conferences is to be met. Bearing this in mind, the Development Council, which is comprised of development ministers from the EU’s 15 member states, asked the Commission Thursday to act as liaison and push for compliance.

Although ministers envision asking EU member states to establish timetables to meet the targets, the specifics of implementation have yet to be worked out.

“The important thing is that we have started a dynamic process and, in fact, we will make sure that what has been promised and announced at earlier solemn occasions by our European heads of state and government, is actually now being followed up in a framework that leads directly to Monterrey”, he said, referring next year’s International Conference on Financing for Development, scheduled for the Mexican venue.

“In view of how the world looks after the 11th of September, it is clearly relevant, useful and necessary that the EU gets organised and starts [internal discussion] on how it can approach the target of 0.7 percent for ODA”, Nielson added, referring to the attacks that led Washington to launch its “war on terrorism”.

“There is a new understanding of interdependency and I think this is also a reason why we are moving forward in this quite spectacular manner”, he said.

Eddy Boutmans, the Belgian State Secretary for Development Cooperation, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said ministers had agreed “the events of September 11 – which have completely changed the international scene – must not in any way undermine the development agenda the EU has set for itself, including poverty reduction”.

He said it was important the EU have its own house in order before heading to the Monterrey conference and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, scheduled for next September in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden have achieved the 0.7-percent target. Austria has said it could attain that level in the next few years and Ireland hopes to do so by 2007.

One development official said that debate within the Development Council over setting such formalised talks had been intense, with countries like Spain and Portugal – whose own levels of ODA fall far short of the U.N. target – arguing against the proposal.

The official said that several delegations occupying the middle ground – Britain, France, Germany, and Spain – argued that their finance ministers must consider the practical implications before modalities could be agreed.

The issue will be examined at the next Council of Economic and Finance Ministers at which the idea of tax relief for private donor funds also is on the agenda.