Josep Borrell with Aina Calvo./ Foto: MAEC
The Diplomat. 14/07/2018
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, yesterday expressed his willingness to improve cooperation, but did not guarantee that the official aid for development, which today stands at 0.2% of GDP, will reach 0.5% «overnight», as he would like. Borrell attended the inauguration of the new director of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Aina Calvo.
The foreign minister acknowledged the efforts made by the outgoing team in what he considered «very difficult times for cooperation» and said that he will try to make better use of the resources available. He added that citizens must know that development policy is not only «redistribute» to alleviate crisis, but should try to provoke structural changes.
For Borrell, the policy of cooperation should not be «an anti-inflammatory» that alleviates urgent needs, but should serve to lay the foundations of the development of the recipient countries, and that, he said, requires «resources but above all intelligence.»
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The new director of the AECID wants cooperation to be the true «country brand»
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For her part, Aina Calvo stressed that her mandate is «to place cooperation policy at the center of political action», to be «the true brand» of the country and for Spain to «recover leadership in international cooperation», not only fulfilling its quantitative commitments but with a greater political presence.
Present at the event were the Secretary of State for Cooperation and for Ibero-America and the Caribbean, Juan Pablo de Laiglesia; former Secretary of State Fernando García Casas, outgoing director, Luis Tejada; and several former socialist leaders, including former General Secretary of the Balearic Socialist Party Francesc Antich; the former Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Leyre Pajín; the ex-deputy Eduardo Madina or the former Secretary of State for Education Eva Almunia.
