Fiona Hall MEP

British NGO, Debt AIDS Trade Africa (DATA), has launched a petition calling on European leaders to make good on their promise to help the world’s poorest people.

The petition, which asks European Commission President Joes Barroso to press the EU to honour the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)* signed in 2000, has been backed by Fiona Hall MEP for the North East and Member of the Development Committee in the European Parliament.

In 2000, the EU made the specific commitment of generating an additional EUR 20 billion by 2010 towards achieving the MDGs in Official Development Assistance (ODA), asking Member States to commit to minimal targets of 0.51% Gross National Income (GNI) to be put towards aid**. This would also ensure the UN goal of 0.7% GNI could be reached by 2015.

However, despite progress in some areas many countries are still not on track to meet these targets. For example, aid from the world’s richest countries fell from 0.31% in 2006 to 0.28% in 2007, calling a halt to the decade long year on year rise in development assistance.

Alarmingly, the EU and UK are included in these figures. For the UK particularly, national official development assistance has dropped from 0.51% of GNI in 2006 to the current level of 0.36%. The UK now lags far behind Norway (0.95%), Sweden (0.93%) and the Netherlands (0.8%) in aid assistance, even though these three countries have agreed to improve on their results by 2010.

Fiona has decided to support the petition to urge Member States not to fall behind on their commitments.

She said: “Although progress is being made towards some of these key goals, much more needs to be done if the 2015 target is to be achieved.

“The UK government needs to redefine where it stands on this issue. Aid from the UK seems to be falling, which contradicts the UK’s pledge to the Millennium Development Goals. The Liberal Democrats have always been committed to reaching the 0.7% goal as a matter of political priority. If other European countries can deliver so should we.

“The countries of Europe must keep their promise and honour the commitments they made in 2000."

HONOUR YOUR COMMITMENT TO THE WORLD’S POOREST SAYS HALL