Brussels, 02/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission scores well among the organisations marked for transparency regarding the official development aid that they allocate, according to the latest report by Publish What You Found (the worldwide campaign for aid transparency) published on Tuesday 2 October, to the very great satisfaction of European Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. In the Index 2012 on aid transparency, which establishes the ranking of the main donors by giving them a score (good, fair, moderate, poor, very poor), the European Commission, represented by DG DEVCO and ECHO, is among the 13 organisations or countries that received the aid transparency score of “fair” (like the Netherlands, the Global Fund, Denmark, Sweden, AfDB, US-MCC, UNDP, IADB, AsDB, GAVI and UN OCHA). Only two organisations score better - the British DFID and the IDA of the World Bank - which come out transparency champions with a “good” score.
“According to Publish What You Found - a watchdog organisation - the European Commission is managing taxpayers' money dedicated to fight poverty in the world in full transparency. EuropeAid ranks as the fifth most transparent donor worldwide, sharing the third best transparency score. We can be proud to be one of the biggest donors in the world, and one of the most transparent and efficient. EU aid is regularly under scrutiny of many organisations: we are sometimes challenged - which helps us to keep improving our impact and procedures - but a majority of voices confirm that EU aid is reaching the people in need and is playing a substantial role in overcoming poverty”, Commissioner Piebalgs commented, seeing the score as “an encouragement and an incentive to continue in this direction”.
In the ranking published last year, EuropeAid was in 9th position. Its efforts to improve transparency have therefore paid off. Just one year ago (in October 2011), the Commission began to publish the information on development aid spending via the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The Commission will now implement the second phase of IATI by publishing more detailed information more speedily, as recommended by Publish What You Found. In the Index 2012, several EU member states (Slovakia, France, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary and Malta are among the transparency dunces, as is China. (AN/transl.jl)