Can EU aid help end poverty by 2015?

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- A day before European Union development ministers meet in Luxembourg to discuss the EU's progress in achieving the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals by 2015, developmental agencies released a joint-report on Monday citing the "heroes and villains" of Europe who have made little progress in increasing aid, debt relief and trade to the world's poorest countries.

Devised in 2000, 191 world leaders agreed to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 in order to help the world's least developed countries reduce their poverty and hunger in half. Under the agreement, countries agreed to contribute more than 0.7 percent of their gross national income by 2015 to meet the UN's target.

Under the Millennium Development Goals, there are eight prescribed targets. They include reducing poverty by half, increasing the number of students receiving primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing the number of child deaths by two-thirds, improving maternal mortality rates by three quarters, combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental stability and increasing trade to developing countries.

But according to development agencies, Action Aid, Eurodad and Oxfam International, the European Union collectively has been faltering in its aims to meet those goals of assisting the least developed countries in terms of aid, debt relief and increasing trade opportunities.

"As one of the world's richest and most powerful trading blocks, it is unacceptable that EU countries' aid, debt relief and trade policies are so far away from what is required to make poverty history," said Louise Hilditch of Action Aid International, one of the three agencies who released the report.

"They are offering little more than crumbs to some of the poorest countries who receive less aid today than they did forty years ago from the EU."

Based on statistics provided by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, only four member states have reached the goal of giving 0.7 percent GNI in aid. Those countries include Denmark (0.84 percent), the Netherlands (0.81 percent), Luxembourg (0.8 percent), and Sweden (0.7 percent). However, Denmark, which has been a leader of aid, has lowered its monetary contribution from 2000 when it was providing 1.03 percent of its GNI.

Blacklisted by the developmental agencies were Italy, Ireland and Germany. According to the report, Italy, one of the world's wealthiest nations, only provides 0.17 percent of its GNI. While Ireland, has completely abandoned its goal of meeting the target of 0.7 percent by 2007. However, Ireland was the first member of the EU to support full cancellation of multilateral debts.

Germany, which has been one of the largest donors of the tsunami and has promised to meet that target, was cited as being incapable of meeting its goals of giving 0.7 percent of its GNI by the "medium term." According to the report, it would take Germany till 2087 to reach that target given current economic trends.

Speaking at the European Institute in Washington on Jan. 28, EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel tried to curtail outside criticism and urged member countries to meet target goals.

"If we are serious about the millennium goals, it is time now to deliver on those goals," said Michel.

"A lot has been said, both in Europe and America, about aid fatigue. But the response of the international community to the tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean has proved the exact opposite," he added.

"We must build on this positive attitude for mobilizing the adequate levels of resources of other 'silent tsunamis' in the world, which generate suffering and poverty at even greater levels."

However, meeting the 0.7 percent was only one crucial area in meeting the Millennium Development Goals, other areas of concerns included the lack of debt relief and increased trade.

According to the three development agencies, the European Union promised in 2002 during a meeting in Barcelona to pursue policy that would allow that "developing countries, and especially the poorest ones, (to) pursue growth and development unconstrained by unsustainable debt."

While member states agreed that they would cancel 100 percent of bilateral debts owed to them by 42 Highly Indebted Poor Countries, some countries have been slow to offer debt relief, like Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

Only half of the $5.1 billion (4 billion euros) debt owed to Italy has been relieved over the last three years. While Germany has only relieved $2.5 billion (2 billion euros) out of the $7.7 billion (6 billion euros) in debt owed to the country, helping only 6 HIPCs.

While the developmental agencies agreed that assistance in relieving multilateral debt would come from international organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it argued that the EU should play its role as well.

"Of the $382 billion (295 billion euros) owed by 52 countries, only $46 billion (36 billion euros) have been canceled," said Alex Wilks of Eurodad, a network of NGOs. "European countries have the opportunity to show leadership in consigning poor countries' debt to a thing of the past. Instead, they are dragging their heels and endangering the success of the Millennium Development Goals."

According to trade and debt relief experts, the assessment made by the developmental agencies is accurate.

"What's been done so far is a modest beginning," said William Cline, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, citing the EU's promise to reduce agricultural subsidies by 20 percent after the first year under the Doha Development Agenda. "A lot more remains to be done."

John Hulsman, Senior Fellow for International Relations at the Heritage Foundation agreed with Oxfam's report, claiming that the EU has not shouldered enough of the burden to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

"This is just another example of EU Member States making solemn pledges that they junk when it becomes inconvenient," said Hulsman, citing several examples including the Growth and Stability Pact, Lisbon Agenda and NATO capability pledges.