Brussels, 25/05/2005 (Agence Europe) - La Cooperation au developpement belge (DGCD), the European Commission (DG Development, ECHO and Europaid), the Council of Europe's North-South Centre, and the OCDE's Development Centre held a European conference in Brussels last week on public awareness and development education for North-South solidarity, to encourage the Member States and the EU, especially the new Member States, to organise public awareness campaigns on the issue. The participants at the conference included Armand De Decker, Belgium's cooperation and development minister, Louis Michel, European Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, Eveline Herfkins, UN coordinator of the Millennium Development Goals campaign, Laszlo Vizi, Director General at the Hungarian foreign minister, and Jean-Luis Schiltz, Luxembourg development cooperation and humanitarian initiatives and current President of the EU's Development Council. The conference gave rise to 16 recommendations for boosting development policies in favour of the world's poorest countries. Jean-Louis Schiltz warned that this could only be done with the necessary budget resources and political will, while Armand De Decker said the public had to be convinced of the utility and effectiveness of the development aid policy and there had to be transparency about where the money actually went. He stressed that development aid policy was not charity, but was a global policy these days crucial for stability on the planet. (http://www.euforic.org/awareness-sensibilisation )