Activities of the European Union - Development and Cooperation

Helping others to help themselves

More than half the money spent on helping poor countries comes from the EU and its member countries, making it the world's biggest aid donor.

But development policy is about more than just providing clean water and surfaced roads, important though these are. The EU also uses trade to drive development by opening its markets to exports from poor countries and encouraging them to trade more with each other.

Overview
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Overview

Eradicating poverty for the new millennium

The primary and overarching objective of EU development policy is to eradicate poverty using a sustainable approach. The UN's eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are key to this. The MDGs range from halving extreme poverty and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS to providing universal primary education. They were adopted by world leaders in 2000 with a 2015 deadline.

The EU has asked national authorities to set financial targets for development funding so as to demonstrate their commitment to the MDGs. A 2005 progress report found that all EU countries had made financial contributions, but that more was needed.

Between 2000 and 2005, 120 million people were lifted out of poverty, and the world is on track to halve poverty by 2015. But other targets will not be met by 2015 – including lowering child and maternal mortality levels and providing clean drinking water.

EU and Millennium Development Goals

Deeper pockets

In 2010, EU development aid totalled €53.8 billion (up €4.5 billion on 2009).

Three of the world's five largest donor countries are EU members, and four of them already donate 0.7% of their gross national income to development aid. But EU-wide, that figure is 0.43%, which means a substantial collective effort is still needed to reach the 0.7% target by 2015.

Gujarati woman at work.

Doing a lot with little

Over the years, the EU has funded thousands of development projects across the world. Often, relatively small amounts of cash go a long way. Recent success stories include:

help for 250 women in the Indian state of Gujarat to export handicrafts to Europe, North America and Japan
support for a local firm in Belize to introduce sustainable logging and forest-management techniques
assistance for farmers in central Cameroon to diversify production
training for small firms in Uganda to share the cost of using essential business support services.

EU development case studies

Controlling their own destiny

EU development policy aims to give disadvantaged people in developing countries control over their own development. That means:

attacking the sources of their vulnerability – such as poor access to food and clean water, education, health, employment, land, social services, infrastructure and a healthy environment
eradicating disease and providing access to cheap medicines for epidemics like HIV/AIDS
reducing developing countries' debt burden, which diverts scarce resources from vital public investments to rich lenders in industrialised countries.
promoting self-help and poverty-eradication strategies that enable developing countries to consolidate the democratic process, expand social programmes, strengthen their institutional framework, increase private and public-sector capacity and reinforce respect for human rights, including equality between men and women.