Eurozone crisis causes aid cuts to poor, report says

The European debt crisis has led to cuts in government development aid to poor countries, says a new report by the aid watchdog Data.

It is the first significant reduction in Europe-wide aid budgets for a decade.

The biggest percentage cuts in the year 2010/11 were made by two of the states worst affected by the debt crisis - Spain and Greece.

But overall European development aid was also down by 1.5%.

The report says the new figures "reveal that those bearing the brunt of Europe's economic crisis include some of the world's poorest people".

"As austerity bites across Europe, we can now see the impact it is having on life-saving aid programmes," it adds.

In the year 2010-11, Spain cut its aid budget - the sixth largest in Europe - by nearly a third.

Greece cut its much smaller programme by 40%, the Data study says.

Anti-poverty target

The report is published as part of a lobbying campaign by aid agencies as EU leaders begin negotiating the next seven year European budget.

Over the last decade the trend has been for aid cash to rise.

European countries account for just over half of all global official development assistance.

Many of them have been slowly nudging towards a United Nations anti-poverty target of 0.7% of national income spent on aid.

The Netherlands and some Scandinavian countries have exceeded this proportion.

By far the biggest three donors are Germany ($14bn - 0.39% of national income), UK ($13.5 bn - 0.55%) and France ($12 bn - 0.42%)

One of the authors of the Data report, Adrian Lovett, said the countries that would be worst affected by any prolonged aid cuts were poor African states.

He said: "The countries we're worried about are mostly in Africa - for example Mozambique, Tanzania and Malawi. At the moment they need aid and its saving lives on a daily basis."