Sweden
EU member states are becoming increasingly inward-looking and eager to promote aid policies which prioritise foreign or domestic policy objectives. These are the main conclusions of the annual AidWatch report by CONCORD, released on May 19th in Brussels.
Despite being the world’s biggest aid donor, only nine countries met their EU aid targets in 2010, with the bloc as a whole falling...
With €53.8 billion (0.43% of its GDP), the European Union’s official development aid (ODA) reached a record level in 2010, up by €4.5 billion on 2009. “The EU remains incontestably the world’s leading donor,” declared Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, while admitting that it has failed to honour its pledge to jointly allocate 0.56% of its gross domestic...
Once part of the Swedish and - subsequently - the Russian empire Turku, a city of 177,500 people in Southwest Finland (300,000 in the wider Turku area), has grown at the side of the River Aura and become a thriving trading and cultural hub. The recognition of its vibrancy in the arts was the announcement of its status as European Capital of Culture for 2011, along with Estonia’s capital,...
In Africa, cloth is not simply a way of covering the body. It also a means of communicating cultural belonging and defining social status. It is like a history lesson made plastic, walking around in towns and villages. This is the concept that Ann Gollifer, a British artist living permanently in Botswana, explores in her work, particularly in her ‘Urban Camouflage’ project....
In a speech given in Warsaw on May 17, EU Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs said: “In Poland, the word ‘solidarity’ is to this day associated with Solidarność, that brave social movement. But it also has a wider meaning: uniting together for a common cause, for example to help others in need”. Today, Poland, once a beneficiary country in terms of aid, has to...
European aid is likely to reach 0.46 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2010. This is a long way short of the 0.56 per cent intermediate target set for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The EU is therefore going to have to step on the accelerator if it is to honour its pledge, restated on 17 June, to increase its aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2015. It...
In the run up to the September Review conference in New York on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the European Commission has drafted a staff working paper on ‘More and Better Education in Developing Countries’, http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/SEC2010_0121_EN.pdf) and is in the midst of drawing up other thematic papers on health, food security, gender...
Off target: EU member states’ aid spending
European Union (EU) member states are not on track to reach the target of an average 0.51 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) to be spent on Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 2010, says a new review of the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The target was set in 2005 by 15 EU member states as an...
‘Green’ Ghanaian timber for Europe
At the end of 2010, the first shipments of timber from Ghana – certified ‘legal and sustainable’ – will be arriving at European ports. This is a major first, the result of several years of negotiations with the European Union (EU) and an example that is likely to be followed by others. More Voluntary Partnership Agreements...
2010 will see the European Union put pen to paper on the blueprint of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which is expected to include a new approach towards fisheries agreements with non-EU countries from 2012. An in-depth evaluation of the existing agreements with West Africa, ‘To draw the line – EU Fisheries Agreements in West Africa’, by the Swedish Society for...
EU member states are becoming increasingly inward-looking and eager to promote aid policies which prioritise foreign or domestic policy objectives. These are the main conclusions of the annual AidWatch report by CONCORD, released on May 19th in Brussels.
Despite being the world’s biggest aid donor, only nine countries met their EU aid targets in 2010, with the bloc as a whole falling...
With €53.8 billion (0.43% of its GDP), the European Union’s official development aid (ODA) reached a record level in 2010, up by €4.5 billion on 2009. “The EU remains incontestably the world’s leading donor,” declared Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, while admitting that it has failed to honour its pledge to jointly allocate 0.56% of its gross domestic...
Once part of the Swedish and - subsequently - the Russian empire Turku, a city of 177,500 people in Southwest Finland (300,000 in the wider Turku area), has grown at the side of the River Aura and become a thriving trading and cultural hub. The recognition of its vibrancy in the arts was the announcement of its status as European Capital of Culture for 2011, along with Estonia’s capital,...
In Africa, cloth is not simply a way of covering the body. It also a means of communicating cultural belonging and defining social status. It is like a history lesson made plastic, walking around in towns and villages. This is the concept that Ann Gollifer, a British artist living permanently in Botswana, explores in her work, particularly in her ‘Urban Camouflage’ project....
In a speech given in Warsaw on May 17, EU Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs said: “In Poland, the word ‘solidarity’ is to this day associated with Solidarność, that brave social movement. But it also has a wider meaning: uniting together for a common cause, for example to help others in need”. Today, Poland, once a beneficiary country in terms of aid, has to...
European aid is likely to reach 0.46 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2010. This is a long way short of the 0.56 per cent intermediate target set for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The EU is therefore going to have to step on the accelerator if it is to honour its pledge, restated on 17 June, to increase its aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2015. It...
In the run up to the September Review conference in New York on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the European Commission has drafted a staff working paper on ‘More and Better Education in Developing Countries’, http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/SEC2010_0121_EN.pdf) and is in the midst of drawing up other thematic papers on health, food security, gender...
Off target: EU member states’ aid spending
European Union (EU) member states are not on track to reach the target of an average 0.51 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) to be spent on Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 2010, says a new review of the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The target was set in 2005 by 15 EU member states as an...
‘Green’ Ghanaian timber for Europe
At the end of 2010, the first shipments of timber from Ghana – certified ‘legal and sustainable’ – will be arriving at European ports. This is a major first, the result of several years of negotiations with the European Union (EU) and an example that is likely to be followed by others. More Voluntary Partnership Agreements...
2010 will see the European Union put pen to paper on the blueprint of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which is expected to include a new approach towards fisheries agreements with non-EU countries from 2012. An in-depth evaluation of the existing agreements with West Africa, ‘To draw the line – EU Fisheries Agreements in West Africa’, by the Swedish Society for...
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