European Union commits €53billion aid a year, make it count say NGOs

The world's biggest aid donor, the European Union, should stand up for ambitious proposals to tackle global poverty at the Busan High Level Forum(HLF4) aid summit say NGOs. CONCORD, Europe’s Relief and Development NGO confederation present in Busan, urges European leaders to make its extensive aid programme more effective at the conference. CONCORD insists $4billion could be saved per year by the EU if it implements better aid refroms and in this context, 62% of European citizens are in favour of increasing development aid to at least 0.7% of EU Gross National Income by 2015. Yet despite Europe’s global contribution to aid and its citizens support, NGOs express concern that the EU is going into Busan with weaker ambitions compared to the strong leadership it showed in 2008 at the last summit of its kind in Accra, Ghana.
“The EU has a positive role to play in supporting more effective aid policies. But we are disappointed to see that greater aid transparency is being blocked by certain EU countries.” says CONCORD President Justin Kilcullen. Also he urged that "EU hasn't show commitment of untying aid and improving local procurement of aid.
Along with EU, coutries attending HLF4 should wake up and strengthen the unity and willingness to improve aid effectiveness between countries in order to show advanced results since the previous HLF conference.