EU member states must honor foreign aid pledge: commissioner

PanARMENIAN.Net - EU member states must finally make good on their pledge to spend 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid as the world prepares to agree the development agenda for the next 15 years, a European commissioner has warned.

Neven Mimica, the EU commissioner for international cooperation and development, said that honouring the commitment on official development assistance (ODA) would enhance Europe’s global standing and help pressure other countries into accepting their financial responsibilities.

“The EU should collectively recommit to the target of spending 0.7% of gross national income spent on ODA,” he said.

“That would actually leverage our negotiating position at the UN when encouraging other developed countries to make the same level of financial commitment. It would also engage emerging donors from upper-middle income countries to take their fair share of their commitments on implementing the new development agenda.”

So far, the UK, Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark are the only EU member states to have hit the 0.7% target, which was originally agreed in 1970.

Speaking as the European commission published its plans for the post-2015 agenda, Mimica said that July’s development finance conference in Ethiopia and September’s UN meeting to agree the sustainable development goals would both require demonstrations of good faith and generosity.

“This financial track will be the most sensitive and delicate part of the Addis Ababa meeting,” he said. “It won’t be easy to get all the developed countries – let alone the emerging donors – to take their fair share. But we can succeed – but only if we as the EU and the largest donor really set an example on committing to this important financial target.”

The commissioner conceded that appealing for development funding was difficult at a time of enduring global financial crisis, but said he hoped the EU would heed “the prevailing expectations of European citizens when it comes to European development solidarity”.

The commissioner said that the key meetings of 2015 – Addis Ababa, New York and the UN climate summit in Paris in December – represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach agreement on the sustainable development agenda.