Brussels, 17/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Union has welcomed the outcome of the third United Nations conference on post-2015 development financing, which ended in Ethiopia on Thursday 16 July with the adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda setting out the global framework for the financing of sustainable development over the next fifteen years.
“I welcome this accord, which puts in place very robust foundations to support the Sustainable Development Goals that will be signed in September in New York and the climate agreement to be adopted in December in Paris,” said EU Cooperation and Development Commissioner Neven Mimica. Speaking on behalf of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, Luxembourg's cooperation and humanitarian action minster, Romain Schneider, stressed the importance of managing and politically accompanying the action plan with financial means.
The participants drafted a forty-six page consensus on: reducing illegal financial flows by 2030 in order to completely eliminate them by tackling tax fraud and corruption and reducing the possibility to carry out tax evasion; - intensifying international fiscal cooperation; - mobilising the private sector as a development partner; - giving women access to financial services and eliminating obstacles to women's participation in the economy; - adopting and applying investment promotion regimes for less developed countries; - boosting development aid; - utilising multilateral and national development bank know-how; - liberalising multilateral trade and completing the Doha Development Programme. The EU had been hoping that the agenda would include all this and more besides (see EUROPE 11322).
The EU is one of the thirty or so players that signed the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on taxation to boost tax systems in developing countries, promising to double aid for the unleashing of domestic resources. The ONE non-governmental organisation that combats extreme poverty has welcomed the agenda, but says the EU must introduce legislation to force multinationals to publish country-by-country tax declarations. Some NGOs, such as 'Collectif CNCD 11.11.11' criticised the fact that no ambitious and innovative measures were taken and the conference decided to leave international tax cooperation in the hands of the OECD, which only represents around forty big countries and therefore excludes developing countries.
On 16 July, the European Investment Bank opened a bureau in Addis Ababa. (Aminata Niang)
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