European Union ministers on Tuesday night surprised and delighted aid agencies around the world when they agreed a dramatic increase in help to countries in Africa and the rest of the developing world that will see the EU’s richest states reach the United Nations’ historic goal of giving 0,7% of national income in aid by 2015.
The move, which came just six weeks ahead of the G8 industrial nations’ summit at Gleneagles, will mean a virtual doubling of the EU’s combined aid by 2010, when the rich 15 all pass the 0,51% mark.
The unexpected success in Brussels will intensify pressure on other rich countries, notably the United States, to increase their own efforts to ”make poverty history”. It will also raise hopes that the pro-development partnership between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown will end on a high note, not with the damp squib many critics have feared.
That would allow Blair to resign — almost certainly in Brown’s favour — with a popular element of his international career vindicated at a time when his dreams of European integration have, at best, stalled and his interventionism in Iraq and elsewhere remains mired in controversy.
The Treasury said on Tuesday night that if all 25 EU member states meet the series of parallel pledges and some go beyond them, as they plan to do, EU collective aid to developing countries, including Africa, will rise from $40-billion (£22-billion, R262-billion) this year to $80-billion in 2010.
It prompted rare unanimity from aid agencies like Oxfam and Christian Aid, as well as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. They all praised what Tory spokesperson, Andrew Mitchell, called ”a significant move in the right direction”.
Brown, and the international development secretary, Hilary Benn, who took part in the negotiation, also welcomed what Benn called ”a major breakthrough in the fight against international poverty”.
But the deal’s potential significance lies in its impact on other countries. ”It’s really fantastic, it could have been better, but it’s a very generous deal that lays down the gauntlet to the United States and Japan. We were desperate for such an injection of cash into the poker game they are all playing,” said a spokesperson for Oxfam.
The small print of Tuesday’s agreement saw the EU’s 10 new members, mostly smaller and poorer, pledge themselves to meet a parallel target of 0,17% of gross national product in aid by 2010 and 0,33% by 2015 — a major shift for countries which were recipients until recently.
In Brussels, Louis Michel, the EU’s development commissioner, told reporters: ”If we lead the way, if we show that we are committed and ambitious to this extent, then other international partners will be obliged, I think, to follow suit and mobilise additional resources.”
In London Brown spoke of a ”once in a lifetime opportunity to make a huge difference”, but warned that it must be followed through at international meetings on aid, debt relief and fairer trade.
With France and Holland facing no votes in their referendums on the EU Constitution, and Italy and Germany gripped by domestic political crises, he and Tony Blair are trying to galvanise more support.
Italy, Germany and Portugal issued statements in Brussels warning that their budget problems may hit EU borrowing limits and stop them meeting the target. EU officials made light of the problem.
As G8 and EU president this year, Blair is also flying to both the US and Russia to try to drum up support. The US aid programme is notoriously modest, only 0,16% of GNP in 2004, though Washington insists that it bears its share of international burdens.
Four EU states — Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — have already met the 2015 target of 0,7%, a UN goal since 1970. Six other member states — Finland, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany and Britain — have promised to reach it before 2015.
”This sends a powerful message to the world,” said Benn. But some aid campaigners were less convinced. ”If Gordon Brown thinks doubling aid will end poverty he has been reading the wrong literature,” said Jonathan Glennie, of Christian Aid. He demanded that European nations reduced the demands which come with aid.
Other aid experts called for reforms of governance in African countries to ensure money is spent beneficially. – Guardian Unlimited Â