Oct 26th, 2012 5:19 PM UTC
By Joseph Powell
On Tuesday the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, made her strongest statement yet in support of the proposed EU aid budget for 2014-2020. At the annual BOND conference she said:
“We do think [the development agenda] is one of the priorities and we will be making the case for it as part of budget negotiations. There are going to be some quite fundamental [debates] and we’ll have to see how they get on, but it will be one of the areas we focus on. It is fair to say the European Development Fund, when we put it through our Multilateral Aid Review in 2011, it came with a good score.”
You can listen to the full speech here. Her answer on European aid begins at 27 minutes.
Over the next few weeks politicians from across the continent will be negotiating the size of the European Union’s budget for 2014-2020. At stake is €51 billion of aid targeted at the world’s poorest. ONE is asking leaders to go on the record in support of this part of the budget in order to protect it from cuts that would have a dramatic impact on the EU’s ability to help tackle poverty around the world. Justine Greening’s statement this week represents an important step forward in the campaign, and we look forward to the UK playing a key role in standing up for the EU aid proposal.
TAGS: Aid, EU budget, UK