Making good on anti-poverty pledges

Date: 22/12/05

Translating rhetoric into reality will be the key challenge for Austria if EU commitments to ease hardship in poor countries are to be honoured.

In May 2005, the 15 'old' member states of the Union agreed that they would all meet a long-standing target of allocating 0.7% of their gross national incomes (GNI) to development aid by 2015.

Vienna has undertaken to ensure that the 15 follow up on those commitments by increasing aid budgets now, as well as to strive towards ensuring more effective aid programmes. Making good on promises will require introspection, as well as hectoring: in 2004 Austria gave just 0.2% of its GNI to poor countries.

Because of its geographical location, Austria has tended to give considerably more aid to the Balkans than the world's lowest income countries. Still, Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik has said she attaches "particular importance" to implementing the EU's newly-devised Africa strategy.

Some anti-poverty advocates have criticised the strategy for not containing specific goals on what proportion of EU aid should be spent on health and education. But Plassnik has pointed out that its aim is to allow African countries to develop independently of outside help. Europe will benefit if greater peace can be achieved in Africa, she added, as this should result in fewer people seeking to migrate.

Discussions are also to take place within the next few months about redefining what constitutes development aid.

Currently the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) does not consider aid for peacekeeping by armies as development assistance. Nonetheless, several EU countries are pressing for it to broaden the parameters of aid. The Union has already effectively done this by using the European Development Fund to finance a peacekeeping mission in Sudan.

Efforts to redefine aid will more than likely be contested by the European Parliament. In the past fortnight, the European Commission has been formally notified that the Parliament has mounted legal action over a EUR 5 million anti-terrorist scheme in the Philippines. The scheme has been supported by development aid earmarked for Asia and Latin America and, according to MEPs, such funding lacks a solid legal base in the Union's treaties.

Article is part of a European Voice Special Report previewing the Austrian Presidency of the European Union, January - June 2006, and says that ensuring effective development aid programmes will be a challenge for Austria.