EU governments accused of a U-turn on aid pledges

A new report raises concerns that EU member states are falling short by nearly €40bn on their overseas aid promises.

The report unveiled in Brussels on Thursday says governments will not meet their 2010 aid targets until 2012 unless "serious action" is taken now.

Justin Kilcullen, president of CONCORD, the development aid organisation that carried out the study, said, "History will judge Europe according to its actions now.

"If Europe fails to act we will be seen as having turned our back on the poorest in their time of need and missed the opportunity to deliver a genuine EU development legacy."

The Aidwatch study also claims that many EU countries are "artificially" inflating overseas aid figures.

This is done by counting debt cancellation towards total pledges even though it is not "new money" for development aid.

The report shows that just a handful of EU countries remain on track to meet the 2010 aid target — helping offset a pledges shortfall elsewhere amounting to €40 billion between 2006-2010.

The missing sum would be enough, says the report, to pay the salaries of more than three million trained nurses over the four-year period.

Last year, says AidWatch, the UK spent 0.41 per cent of national income on aid - the same as Spain but less than Luxembourg (0.92%), Sweden (0.90%), Denmark (0.78 per cent) and the Netherlands (0.75 per cent).

Italy (0.16 per cent), came bottom of the league of the 15 EU countries that promised to spend at least 0.56 per cent of national income on aid by 2010, rising to 0.7 per cent by 2015.

On current showing, the report warns, the EU is “way off-track” to achieve the 2015 target.

However, the Netherlands certainly will meet the 2010 target of 0.56 per cent, and the UK, Spain and Luxembourg are “likely” to so, even without “inflating” the figures to include debt relief and other “non-aid” items such as foreign student education and help for refugees arriving in Europe.

Belgium certainly will not hit the 2010 target, while Ireland, Denmark and Sweden are “unlikely” to do so.

Those eight countries have volunteered even tougher goals than the 2015 EU target: the UK has promised to hit 0.7 per cent by 2013, Ireland the same figure by 2012, while Luxembourg has pledged to spend a full 1 per cent of its national wealth on development aid as soon as next year.

At the other end of the scale, Estonia, Greece and Latvia have lowered their commitments below 0.56 per cent next year.

Noerine Kaleeba, of ActionAid International,said,"The EU is doing a U-turn on its aid commitments just as poor countries are being severely hit by the economic crisis."

Elise Ford, head of Oxfam International's EU office, said, "The lives of millions of poor people are on the line as is Europe's reputation."

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