The AidWatch initiative warned in last year`s report - “Challenging Self-Interest” - about the threat that the EU`s growing focus on its own problems posed for efforts to achieve the EU’s aid promises. Unfortunately, these concerns were well founded. In 2011, Official Development Assistance (ODA, later in the text also referred to as aid/aid budgets) from EU Member States fell for this first time since 2007 in GNI terms and was equivalent to 0.42% ODA/GNI in 2011, only 0.01 percentage point higher than in 2005 when they made their historic aid promises. The total ODA of the EU’s original 15 Member States reached the slightly higher level of 0.45% in 2011, while the total ODA of the 12 new EU Member States remained at its 2010 level of 0.1% in 2011.

Projecting forward to 2015 based on current ODA levels and available budget figures for the coming years, the best estimates available suggest that the ODA of EU Member States will reach only 0.44% in 2015. Without urgent efforts to address these trends EU Member States will miss their 2015 ODA promises by an astonishing margin.

EU donors are not doing enough to invest the ODA they are providing on development and poverty reduction activities in developing countries. At least €2.34 billion (or 4,4 %) of EU ODA was delivered through contributions to the Fast Track Climate Finance initiative, which EU member states continue to count towards their ODA spending despite the fact that developing countries have called for such contributions to be additional to their ODA commitments.