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Eradicating poverty through sustainable development
About half the money spent to help poor countries comes from the
European Union or its individual member states, making the EU the
world’s biggest aid donor. But development assistance is not just about
providing clean water and surfaced roads, important though those are. It
is also about helping the developing countries improve their trade
performance by giving them better access to the EU market. This should
enable them to develop and strengthen their external trade and so take
advantage of globalisation.
Not all have succeeded in doing this. Although the African, Caribbean
and Pacific (ACP) countries have a special relationship with the
European Union, their share of EU markets has continued to fall, and
they have become increasingly marginalised in world trade.
This is why the EU’s development strategy also focuses on helping poor
countries improve their infrastructures, develop their productive
potential and make their public administration and institutions more
efficient. With this support, some will be able to grasp trade
opportunities and secure more inward investment to broaden their
economic base. This is essential in enabling countries to integrate into
the global economy and achieve sustainable growth and development.
More specifically, the Union is combining trade and aid in a new way in
the next generation of ‘economic partnership agreements’, currently
being negotiated with the ACP countries and due to be in place by 2008.
The idea is to help the ACP countries integrate with their regional
neighbours as a step towards global integration, and to help them build
institutional capacities and apply principles of good governance. At the
same time, the EU will continue to open its markets to products from the
ACP group, and other developing countries.
Deep pockets
The European Union and its member countries pay out more than €30
billion a year in official aid to developing countries, of which about
€6 billion is channelled through the EU institutions. The Union has
committed itself to raising the annual total to €39 billion by 2006.
Although EU members, like other industrialised countries, have accepted
a target of spending 0.7% of their GNP on aid each year, only Denmark,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden have reached this target. The
others have pledged to catch up. The average for the EU as a whole is
0.34%, higher than the United States or Japan.
Water for life
Access to water and a fair sharing of trans-frontier water resources are
major issues in all regions of the world and will be among the biggest
development challenges of the 21st century. The EU’s Water for Life
initiative, launched in 2002, seeks to bring safe water and sanitation
to the world’s poorest regions, particularly in Africa but also in the
Caucasus and central Asia, the Mediterranean and Latin America. The
European Union has made one billion euro available to finance this
initiative.
The ultimate objective of EU policy is to give people in less advanced
countries control over their own development. This is why EU priorities
are to attack the sources of their vulnerability: ensuring better food
and clean water; improving access to education, healthcare, employment,
land and social services; providing better infrastructure and a better
environment. EU initiatives also aim at eradicating diseases and
providing access to cheap medicines to combat scourges like HIV/AIDS.
The EU also seeks to cut the debt burden on poor countries.
Recognising that peace is a basic condition for sustainable development,
the Union agreed in 2004 to set up a €250 million fund called the ‘Peace
facility’, to support African peacekeeping and conflict prevention
operations. |
