A press statement from CONCORD, the European Confederation for Development NGOs calls on the European Union, as the world's largest donor of official development assistance, to demonstrate leadership on aid effectiveness and agree on ambitious and measurable actions to reform aid and ensure it reaches those that need it most.

Over 1,000 officials from donor and developing countries will meet in Accra from 2nd to 4th September 2008 to report back on progress made against meeting the targets set out in the Paris Declaration in 2005 and to endorse a new Accra Agenda for Action on aid.

Politicians made high level political promises to make aid better for poor people, but lack of progress on these commitments means their credibility is now at stake.

CONCORD says that governments own surveys have found that three years since making these promises, donors have made little or no progress in improving the quality of their aid. This year's meeting in Accra provides governments with a chance to put things back on track and move towards more effective, accountable and transparent aid. Too much aid remains driven by donors priorities and interests, which can undermine democratic accountability in countries receiving aid, and sideline the needs of the poor.

Donors take decisions which affect the lives of real people in poor countries, yet they are almost completely unaccountable to them. One key first step towards making aid more effective and accountable would be for donors to sign up to international best practice transparency standards in Accra said Jesse Griffiths of ActionAid's aid policy team.

Despite donor commitments for reform, the majority of aid still undermines developing country systems by setting up parallel donor structures and enforcing damaging policy conditions which are used to promote donor economic and foreign policy interests.

We know that donors have the power to unblock many of the obstacles to improving aid. If donors do not make concrete commitments to change the way they do business when they meet in Accra, the outcome will be more inaction and more ineffectiveness concludes Justin Kilcullen, President of CONCORD.

The European Union has the responsibility to ensure that concrete actions are agreed in Accra which improve the transparency of both donors and developing country governments, end the practice of attaching policy conditions to aid, and ensure aid is effective in meeting the needs of those for whom it is intended.