Brussels – Today the European Parliament approved the EU’s Global Europe Instrument also known as NDICI (The Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument).

Emily Wigens, EU Director at The ONE Campaign, reacted: 

“With a limited budget, it is vital every Euro in the new Global Europe instrument delivers development outcomes where needs are greatest. It is good news that the EU’s new aid instrument has targets for investments in vital areas like health and education, gender, and climate. The pandemic has unraveled years of development progress so these targets must be met year on year in order to avoid a lost decade for partner countries.

The EU simply cannot afford to prioritise short-term political objectives rather than long-term development with these life-saving funds. This is a particular risk for the un-earmarked emerging challenges and priorities budget line, worth more than 9 billion during this long-term budget cycle. To put it bluntly, in a pre-COVID-19 world, the budget for the EU’s new Global Europe Instrument might have sufficed but the additional needs caused by the pandemic mean the EU ODA will fall short of what we need to tackle rising extreme poverty, hunger, and inequality”.