Leiders G8 zeggen 20 miljard toe aan ontwikkelingslanden (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Leaders from the Group of Eight industrialised countries agreed to donate $20 billion (€14.3bn) to developing countries on Friday (10 July), $5 billion (€3.6bn) more than was originally anticipated.
The money will fund a three-year initiative to help poorer countries develop their agriculture.
"We believe that the purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it's no longer needed, to help people become self-sufficient," said US president Barack Obama i after the meeting.
European commission president Jose Manuel Barroso i called the decision "a clear commitment to food security."
The G8 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with Spain also attending this time round.
The EU institutions are represented by the European commission president and the leader of the member state that holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency.
Many development NGOs issued a guarded welcome to the news.
"The G8 and other leaders upped their game today by committing $20 billion for agriculture assistance. Much of this funding is recycled, but the new money makes a downpayment on eliminating hunger," Oxfam's senior policy advisor Gawain Kripke said in a statement.
"With a billion people facing hunger, more new money is still needed," he added.
Controversial claw-backs
Hours earlier on Friday, a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels decided to cut roughly €80 million in external aid from a draft EU 2010 budget that was proposed by the European commission in April.
The total budget cuts - that cannot be formally approved until the end of this year - exceed €600 million, as member state governments become increasingly concerned over rising budget deficits.
Another controversial area where member states are seeking to claw back money is the ‘growth and employment measures' budgetary category, with €100million of cuts proposed.
If agreed, the cuts will reduce the amount of money member states have to pay into the EU's budget for 2010.
"We feel it sends a negative message in the priority areas of growth and jobs and in the EU's role on the international stage, particularly during an economic crisis," the European commission's spokeswoman for the EU budget, Cristina Arigho, told EUobserver.
She added that the decision to cut all the payment for the emergency aid reserve: "only reduces our capacity to react quickly if a crisis situation appears."
Commission to win out?
The commission administers the EU's budget, with the vast majority on money going towards development projects in the bloc's poorer regions and agriculture.
Mr Hans Li Dblad, state secretary at the Swedish finance ministry, told journalists after the meeting of finance ministers that he was happy with the outcome, saying it struck: "a balance between targeted cuts in some areas and financing political priorities."
However commission officials are confident the final budget for 2010 will be close to their original proposal, as has been the case in previous years despite member state attempts to cut back spending.
In a sign of the low importance finance ministers attached to Friday's meeting, less than half decided to turn up, with the lack of a quorum leaving agriculture ministers to sign-off on the conclusions next week.
The 2010 budget – likely to be in the region of €140 billion - will be the first time that member states which joined the union in 2004 or later will receive over 50 percent of the EU's cohesion and structural funds.
This year the twelve relative newcomers will receive 50 percent of the funds, rising to 52 percent next year.