The European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council met Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, to adopt a formal position setting out the bloc’s position ahead of July’s third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and September’s U.N. summit on the post-2015 development agenda.
Last week, Devex reported that disagreements between member states ahead of the council meeting meant European governments could drop their aid pledge — known as the 0.7 percent aid target — to developing countries and that this, in turn, could threaten to derail the EU’s anti-poverty commitment.
While development ministers renewed their collective commitment to achieving the official development assistance target of 0.7 percent of gross national income, a number of international nongovernmental organizations were left cold by the collective EU position, which sees the deadline for achieving this target pushed back from 2020 to 2030 — within the time frame of the post-2015 agenda.