EU Presidency Statement - United Nations ECOSOC: Forum for Cooperation and Development

- The effective contribution of aid towards the eradication of poverty in developing countries (impact)

- The capacity of donor and recipient countries to meet intermediary goals and collaboratively set targets (effectiveness)

- The use of low-cost resources (efficiency)

- The optimal allocation of aid on a geographical and sector basis (relevancy).

- The ascendancy of new donors (emerging countries, vertical funds, private foundations and civil society organizations), which offer new opportunities for beneficiary countries, but, which by multiplying the number of sources and the channels of aid transmission, create a risk of fragmentation or redundant credit allocations

- The discrepancy between the needs of countries and current aid allocation, which is highly concentrated and follows different lines of reasoning

- The lack of previsibilty of ODA

- The importance of strengthening national capacity, the backbone of effective aid, which fulfils the principle of ownership and leadership of beneficiary countries.

- The necessity to rethink aid allocation taking into account the on-going transformations of the aid architecture. The extreme diversity of beneficiary countries prohibits a one-size-fits-all aid implementation model.

- The indispensable use of a wider array of instruments in accordance with the situations of beneficiary countries.

- The European Union strongly reaffirms its commitment to achieve a collective ODA target of 0.56% GNI by 2010 and 0.7% GNI by 2015. Various Member-States have established, or are to establish, multi-year timetables to reach these targets.

- In the context of the meeting in Accra, the EU will undertake radical reforms to improve aid effectiveness, building on the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness, the European consensus on development and the code of conduct on complementarity and division of labour, which is implemented together with partners, by focusing on the following areas identified by partner countries: the division of labour among the donor countries, the predictability of aid, enhanced use of country systems and mutual accountability in order to achieve development goals. The EU will further engage with all partners concerned, civil society and local stakeholders to ensure transparency, strengthen democratic ownership and ultimately increase the impact of the aid. For implementation, the starting point is partner country ownership and close cooperation among all donors, with the EU as a possible catalyst.

- The European Union will continue to advocate cross-cutting issues on the development agenda: human rights, democracy, democratic governance, gender equality and environmental sustainability

- It will continue to improve the policy coherence for development (PCD) in the 12 areas identified, ensuring furthermore that policy coherence for development principles are part of the international agenda for the MDGs and aid effectiveness.

- The EU underlines the importance of stable, multi-annual predictable ODA. The EU also reiterates the need to further develop and implement innovative sources of financing in order to increase predictability and sustainability of financial flows, and encourages efforts to find new innovative sources and systems (§ 36 ccls GAERC).