When the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a new initiative at the UN Head Quarters in New York to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before its 2015 deadline, the Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Sócrates was one of the 14 political leaders to join this “moral alliance.”  He signed on, but now he should also act, said UN Millennium Campaign coordinator Luis Mah in the country’s leading reference newspaper Público. With co-authors João Meneses (of the NGO TESE) and João Fernandes (of the NGO Oikos), he urged Sócrates to keep Portugal’s commitment in increasing Official Development Assistance to 0.7% of the National Income by 2015.

In the annual report on Official Development Assistance (ODA) last April, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) demonstrated that Portugal gave only 0.21 instead of the promised 0.33 percent of its Gross National Income in 2006. In the European Union, only Greece and Italy did worse. Portugal, thus, is far from fulfilling its international commitments in terms of more and better aid. The op-ed writers called on the Prime Minister to act, and not just promise to.