(Storbritanniens finansminister) Gordon Brown prompted an angry response from Brussels Thursday when he attacked Europes aid policy as “nonsensical” (urimelig/meningsløs) and called for the focus of development strategy to be switched from the Balkans to Africa and Asia, reports the World Bank press review Friday.
Brown urged the European commission to boost spending to poor countries by 1 billion euro (7,43 milliard DKR) a year. Brown said reform of the EU aid budget was crucial, with only 45 percent of the budget between 1999 and 2002 spent in countries where poverty was most acute.
– It is nonsensical that less than 50 percent of European Union development assistance is being spent in low income countries and that more than euros 28 euros per head is being spent in well-resourced middle income regions like the western Balkans when Africa receives only euros 3,17 euros per head and Asia, where most of the worlds poor live, is receiving only around euros 0,30 euro per head, said Brown.
The chancellor told Bond (British overseas NGOs for development) that he wanted to see 70 percent of the EU aid budget directed to low-income countries, a figure not reached since the early 1990s.
Chris Patten, European commissioner for external relations, hit back at the chancellor, saying: – Brown is not the first British minister to fail to compare like this in taking an opportunistic swipe at the spending of EU aid in third world countries.
– The commissions record in providing development assistance to alleviate poverty in the poorest countries in the world compares well with other European and international donors. This is separate from the very significant resources that, with the full support of member states including the UK, we spend in promoting security and stability, particularly in our immediate neighborhood, said Patten.
Gordon Brown also called on the commission to back his plan to float government-backed bonds on the worlds capital markets. Britains proposed International Finance Facility (IFF) envisages a doubling of global aid to 100 billion US dollar (600 milliarder DKR) a year, but so far has found only a limited number of backers.
The chancellor said that if Brussels committed 1 billion euros to the IFF it could leverage up to 2 billion euros a year from 2006 on hitting the 2015 goals of halving global poverty, cutting infant mortality by one third and putting every child in primary school.
The Independent (UK) adds that EU aid commissioner Poul Nielson argued that the IFF scheme smacked of “innovative Enron accounting” in a reference to the accounting malpractices that led to the collapse of the US energy trade giant.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
