Brussels, 20/04/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission is expected to publish two new strategic documents on EU development policy that will help the EU prepare its position ahead of the UN summit in New York in September 2010 revising the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), on the fringes of a sitting of the United Nations Assembly General.
The “April Package”, prepared by the department headed by EU Development Policy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, will contain a 12-point action plan to accelerate progress in the achievement of the MDG and a report on taxation and development entitled 'Cooperating with developing countries to promote good governance in tax issues'. The package will be examined by the Foreign Affairs Council on 11 May 2010.
The year 2010 will be key for assessing progress to date in achieving the MDGs because it marks the two-thirds point from the year 2000, when the goal was set of halving poverty and starvation in the world by the year 2015, ensuring every child gets primary education, promoting equality between the sexes, rendering women autonomous, reducing infant mortality, improving mothers' health, tackling HIV, AIDS, malaria and other poverty diseases, ensuring a sustainable environment and introducing a global development partnership. Time is running out but these goals are nowhere near being met and some poor countries are lagging even further behind under the pressure of the financial and economic crisis, to a worrying extent.
The 12-point action plan will encourage member states to increase development aid to 0.7% of GNI by 2015 with a head of state peer review mechanism to reverse the reduction of European aid seen in 2009 (see EUROPE 10118). The plan includes innovative sources of finance and aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of aid by targetting the countries lagging the most behind.
The report on taxation and development will examine weaknesses that need to be addressed as they are preventing developing countries from garnering sufficient tax revenue, suggest ways of remedying this and suggest that the EU aids developing countries in strengthening their tax systems.
The two reports will be accompanied by four working documents on the effectiveness of aid, trade aid, coherence in EU development policies and the Monterrey pledges. The package supplements specific proposals unveiled by the European Commission recently on the EU's role in global healthcare (see EUROPE 10110) and a special EU system to help developing countries meet food security challenges (see EUROPE 10110 and 10109). Other documents were published in the past on improving the education system in developing countries, the EU action plan on sexual equality and a greater role for women in development. (A.N./transl.fl)