Doing more, better and faster - Europe cares ...

Today leaders from around the world are gathered in New York at the UN General Assembly for a review of progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) agreed by the international community in 2000: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development. The European Union has geared its development policy firmly towards poverty reduction. We share the vision of the UN's Millennium Declaration: a world free from want.

The good news is that we are on track to achieve some objectives globally (primary education and education of girls). This, however, is not enough. Despite all efforts by donors and developing countries, extreme poverty remains a daily reality for more than one billion people today. One out of four people do not have access to safe drinking water and sanitation. A staggering 114 million children do not have access to primary school. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa, many countries are lagging well behind by many indicators (hunger, infant mortality, maternal mortality, communicable diseases, sustainable environment).

We must do more and better. Not as an act of charity but out of enlightened self-interest: all of us are vulnerable to what we think of as dangers only threatening other people. Millions more of Africa's inhabitants would plunge below the poverty line if a major terrorist attack against a financial centre in the developed world were to cause a global economic downturn. At the same time millions of Europeans (or Americans) could quickly become infected by a disease breaking out in a country with poor health care and carried across frontiers by travellers.

In a globalised world, no nation can thrive on its own: our safety, our prosperity, our freedom are indivisible. The main challenge the international community must face today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all of mankind. Despite the considerable opportunities it offers, globalisation's benefits and costs are at present unequally distributed.

There is no sustainable development without peace and security. We believe that sustainable development is the best structural response to the root causes of violence and conflict and the best way to harness globalisation. This is our joint message which we will be carrying throughout this week at the UN's special summit in New York.

To achieve progress, all countries must work together. The EU is conscious of its particular responsibility as the largest donor and the most important trading partner of the developing world. Its joint financial commitment represents about 55 per cent of all public development aid spent worldwide. It allows the least developed countries free access to its markets. In 2004, developing countries had more than a 60 per cent share in all EU agricultural imports and an almost 70 per cent share in all EU textile imports.

But we are ready to do more and better. This spring, the EU decided to almost double its yearly budget for public development aid within 10 years. Altogether, the Union's development budget will increase by more than one third in only four years: from approximately €46 billion in 2006 to about €66 billion in 2010. With these additional funds, the EU will, for example, be able to bring safe drinking water to 730,000 villages, support 130,000 AIDS orphans in Malawi or train 35,000 teachers in Kenya. The cost for the European taxpayer? The equivalent of three cinema tickets or the cost of two DVDs per year.

We are committed to more aid but also to better aid. The EU is determined to improve both our capacity to deliver and recipient countries' absorption capacity. We have set up an ambitious agenda that goes beyond the international efforts to reduce the transaction cost of aid and its burden on the partner countries. But we will not just provide new resources, we will also work towards improving trading opportunities for developing countries. We are committed to ensuring that the outcome of the global trade talks live up to the promise of a "development round".

With these decisions, the EU has taken the lead in the quest to halve poverty within the next 10 years. To make this happen, other donor countries also have to deliver on the aid and trade pillar of development.

But developing countries themselves also have to deliver on their part of the bargain: a key lesson from 40 years of development cooperation and economic history in particular is that development is something largely determined by poor countries themselves. The effectiveness of aid as well as the capacity to exploit market access largely depends on the institutions and policies of each developing country. The international community can support developing countries' efforts in this respect but the policy choices are for them to make.

The EU, with its wide array of common and coordinated policies, its web of partnership and cooperation agreements and its network of about 130 representations around the world is uniquely placed to help developing countries address the challenges they face in economic development, employment and social development, environment, climate change, security, agriculture and fisheries, research and development. We want to put these at the service of development, to realise the vision that inspired the Millennium Declaration: "Only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalisation be made fully inclusive and equitable".

Mr Michel is European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid. Dr Frendo is Malta's Minister of Foreign Affairs.