On Monday 30 June, the European Union and its Member States, together with the members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
In a joint declaration, the parties expect the International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4), which is taking place until Thursday 3 July in Seville, to accelerate collective action towards a renewed global framework for financing sustainable development and to confirm the indispensable role of multilateralism.
Public and private funding. “Concerned by the low level of implementation of the 2030 Agenda”, the signatories call for “urgent” action “to close the financing gap, catalyse sustainable development investments at scale, while also addressing and responding to new and remaining issues”, building in particular on the Programme of Action adopted in July 2015 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) at the previous UN conference on financing.
The parties stress the importance of mobilising private funding and national, bilateral, triangular or multilateral public resources for leverage purposes.
The EU and the OACPS also reaffirm the target of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) for official development assistance (ODA) and 0.15% to 0.20% for the least developed countries (LDCs). However, they point out the limitations of GDP as an indicator and stress the relevance of the principles of development effectiveness.
Debt management. Faced with the growing burden of public debt in many OACPS member countries, the signatories call for national debt management capacities to be strengthened and for the implementation of existing initiatives to be stepped up, such as the ‘G20’ Common Debt Framework or the three-pillar approach promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, designed to support vulnerable countries facing liquidity difficulties.
In addition, the EU and OACPS welcome the reallocation of over $100 billion in Special Drawing Rights to vulnerable countries, call for rules-based multilateralism and reform of global financial governance, and build on the Global Gateway initiative to support sustainable investment in key sectors in partner countries.
See the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/hnb (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)