EU: EU countries agreed yesterday to boost aid spending to help implement a UN global poverty plan, in the hope of shaming other rich donors into giving more.
EU foreign and development ministers set firm interim targets to help meet a goal of spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) on official development aid in 10 years' time.
Meeting the interim target would boost aid by €20 billion a year from 2010, at a cost to taxpayers in the EU's old members of an extra €49.
World leaders will gather in September to discuss the slow rate of progress towards the UN's millennium goals, which include halving the world's most abject poverty by 2015.
Germany, Italy and Portugal issued separate statements pointing to difficulties with their national budgets and highlighting EU rules that limit members' ability to borrow.
But Luxembourg, which currently holds the EU presidency, said these declarations should not be seen as an escape clause.
"Some member states have expressed difficulties . . . [ but] the main thing is that despite those difficulties, those countries have committed themselves," Luxembourg's co-operation and humanitarian aid minister Jean-Louis Schiltz said.
The bloc's 15 old member states agreed to spend at least 0.51 per cent of GNI on development aid by 2010 and at least 0.7 per cent by 2015.
Only four states - Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - have already met the 2015 target.
Six others - Finland, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany and Britain - have promised to reach it before 2015.
The 10 mostly poorer new member states mainly from eastern Europe pledged they would strive to spend at least 0.17 per cent of GNI by 2010 to reach a goal of 0.33 per cent in 2015.
- (Reuters)
Deaglán de Bréadún writes: A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said last night that Ireland's Official Development Assistance as a percentage of gross national product (GNP) in the last four years was as follows: 2001: 0.33 per cent; 2002: 0.41 per cent; 2003: 0.40 per cent; 2004: 0.40 per cent (estimated).
However, Oxfam Ireland estimates the figure for 2004 at 0.39 per cent.
Welcoming the interim targets announced by EU development ministers, Oxfam spokesman Colin Roche said: "On current trends Ireland will miss these targets and not achieve the UN commitment of 0.7 per cent of GNP until some time around 2028."