Last week leaders from the United States and European Union met in Washington DC for the regular US-EU Summit.

The team at ONE has reviewed the summit’s declaration [PDF] and picked out some of the key points.

Overall the document contains some very positive language on the need to work together to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 and development has been ratcheted up the agenda as a focus for cooperation. There’s also a separate annex on Development. The main point is that the US and EU want to work together with more urgency towards the MDG Summit and up to 2015:

‘we recognize that a coordinated international effort is needed to assist developing countries accelerate progress towards the MDGs’

The Declaration itself pledges to re-launch US-EU dialogue on development, and the first meeting to re-launch of this dialogue will happen at ministerial level very soon. Ministerial level meetings will thereafter be annual, with meetings of the re-launched High Level Consultative Group on Development to be held in between.

The Annex to the declaration outlines 3 areas for close cooperation between the US and EU:

• Food security and agricultural development: initial focus on Africa, will join efforts in a Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition; support for the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.
• Climate change: focus on country-driven adaptation strategies and a pledge to concentrate on the development aspects of climate change.
• MDGs: ‘recognizes that a coordinated international effort is needed to assist developing countries accelerate progress towards the MDGs’. As well as Overseas Development Assistance, policy coherence for development, aid effectiveness and new innovative financing mechanisms mentioned.There are plentiful references to measuring outputs and results of development cooperation as well as a focus on Accra and aid effectiveness.

The declaration comes at a timely moment at the beginning of a new European Commission and Parliamentary mandate in Brussels, and gives us a good kick-off to help ensure that achievement of the MDGs remains high on the political agenda in both Brussels and Washington DC.

-Eloise Todd