No time to waste: European governments behind schedule on aid quantity and quality

This report provides the views of NGOs from all across the EU on their government’s performance in terms of aid deliverty. In addition to providing an overview of European Union (EU) country profiles, it also looks at a breakdown of key themes relevant to the subject of aid effectiveness and quality.

The authors point out that EU governments provide over half of the world’s aid and have pledged to increase this further. The EU has also committed to improve both the way aid is delivered, and other development finance policies, to ensure better outcomes for millions of impoverished people. The latest aid figures however, show that many countries are not yet pulling their weight and that the EU is not on track to meet its own targets. Effort is required from each and every government to increase the quantity of their aid, and to meet aid targets with genuine aid money rather than with non-aid items.

The document concludes by highlighting some of the key demands from the 1,600 European NGOs represented in the report. These include that European governments:

• increase the delivery of genuine aid resources to meet their 2010 and 2015 targets
• agree binding year-on-year timetables to achieve the agree targets with real aid resources and ensure that steady increases in their aid budgets allow them to reach the targets by the agreed deadlines
• stop counting refugee costs, student costs and debt relief as official development assistance - resist the temptation of further inflating their figures in the coming years by counting other nonaid items, such as migration or security related expenditures
• make evaluation of aid truly independent, including supporting country-led independent bodies in partner countries and developing a complaints mechanism open to those affected by EU aid.