Think tank europe

Are the Millennium Development Goals proving counter-productive?
02/09/2010
Author : Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (FRIDE - Spain)
By Oladiran Bello | FRIDE - Policy Brief 53 - August 2010
 
The EU’s discourse on the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) remains unhelpfully inward-looking. Heavy on chest-beating
reassertions of Europe’s unmatched development spending, the official
rhetoric falls short on concrete plans for connecting EU aid to trade and
investment in partner developing countries. The restrictive, technical
approach of the MDGs has come under criticism, inspiring donors in Asia
and elsewhere to seize the initiative to canvass their own successful development models for Africa. For the EU, the opportunity to carve out a leading, agenda-setting role in theMDGs debate is fast evaporating amidst Brussels’ unwillingness to broach policy alternatives and approaches to African development being canvassed by increasingly influential rival donors.

As the much anticipated September 2010 UN summit on the MDGs
approaches, pronouncements by the EU development commissioner and
several European functionaries suggest the goals remain attainable by the 2015 deadline. In this formulation, re-doubling ongoing international
efforts and scaling-up aid commitments alongside better efficiency measures will be the centrepieces of a final push towards improving social development indicators in the poorest parts of the world. Yet, in a year
dominated by discussions of the EU’s own European External Action Service and plans to improve coherence between development policy and wider external action, the MDGs provide a major test of Europe’s global ambitions and development impact post-Lisbon Treaty.

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