Italian aid effectiveness strategy: first ever official statements

On June 26th, at a UN sponsored Parliamentary event, the deputy general director for the Italian development cooperation partially unveiled the Italian priorities for EU Accra agenda. Italy is supporting a greater role for civil society within the Paris Declaration. As for the EC sponsored division of labour, Italy is willing to increase its engagement in fragile States, while volunteering to play a role in health, education, rural development, with keep focus on other cross-country sectors (women empowerment and environment). The official data on sector of engagement will be published at the end of July. Unfortunately there was no reference to further aid untying. The EC division of labour is pushing the Italia development cooperation to understand whether its added value is. While discussion on aid quality is slowly moving on, the government is cutting the 738 million worth development cooperation budget within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by 510 million euro over the next 3 years.