EU: 75 billion euros missing from EU aid coffers

Embarrassing. This is the word that Concord campaigner Jasmine Burnley uses to describe the confrontation that EU Development ministers will have to face on 27th May in Brussels when they will be met by Concord?s NGO campaigners demanding answers on the EU?s 75 billion aid gap.

In a report out today, May 22, Concord, a European confederation of relief and development NGOs representing the interests of over 1,600 NGOs, highlights that the EU?s broken aid promises cost lives. The report ?No Time to Waste? reveals that unless the EU gears up its giving it will have donated 75 billion less aid by 2010 than it had promised, leaving small hope that the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved by 2015.

?A hundred thousand estimated dead in Burma, food prices rocketing and a woman dying every minute in pregnancy or childbirth. Now, more than ever, European governments must deliver the aid they promised to the world?s poor? says? Justin Kilcullen, President of Concord.

Loud voices
On May 27th EU Ministers will meet at the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) to discuss aid for development. Members of Concord, including representatives from Oxfam, Action Aid and Save the Children, will gather outside the GAERC meeting at 9.30 am to raise their voices against the continuing aid gap.

The official statistics, released by the OECD in April, showed that European aid fell sharply in 2007, with Belgium, France and the UK recording falls of 10-30%. According to the OECD: ?most donors are not on track to meet their stated commitments to scale up aid and will need to make unprecedented increases to meet the targets they have set.?

Inflated statistics
Concord?s report has found that European governments continue to ?inflate? their aid statistics with debt relief and refugee costs. The report finds that the 15 older Member States provided only 0.33% of their gross national income as genuine aid in 2007 ? continuing to miss the target set for 2006 of 0.39% of GNI.

Each year of slow progress means billions less in aid for the world?s poorest people: ?Broken promises cost lives. If you live in Senegal where one in eight children dies before reaching his or her fifth birthday, aid means services and services mean the difference between life and death,? said Moussa Faye, Chief Executive of ActionAid Senegal.

Time for accountability
The report says the EU must also roll up its sleeves on the quality of its aid, making it accountable and transparent. The EU has committed to make aid work better by making it more predictable, better coordinated, and aimed at promoting gender equality and women?s? empowerment, but NGOs are concerned that these targets are not being met and that more ambitious commitments are needed.

2008 is a crucial year for aid, testing the credibility of European governments. At the High Level Ministerial Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, Ghana this coming September, the EU will review its progress against crucial commitments made in 2005 in Paris. ?Europe has a responsibility to take the lead at this crucial event by delivering more and better aid? says Marivic Raquiza of GCAP South-East, North and Central Asia (GCAP-SENCA)."

European NGOs join the OECD and the European Commission in calling on European governments to honour their promises and commit to clear, measurable, binding timetables setting out the year-on-year aid increases in aid that are necessary for the MDGs to be met.

Find out more with Vita Europe

• EU inflates aid to development figures
• Will Italy's aid track record be set straight in time for the G8?
• 2007 a failure for aid

Find out more about Concord

• www.concordeurope.org
• No Time to Waste