About: Millennium Development Goals

Andris Piebalgs: ‘MDGs made the world a better place to live’

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have already had a "huge impact in the world" and made it "a better place to live", according to the EU's development commissioner, Andris Piebalgs. While the world has not met all the targets, which they were supposed to do by 2015, the MDGs have paved the way for a "far more ambitious" post-2015 development agenda, Pielbalgs told EURACTIV ahead of the European Development Days, a conference that will be held in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

Barroso’s speech at the UN Millenium Development Goals Summit in New York

Speech by President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso at the Opening of the Special Event on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. A roadmap to an agreement on a new list of sustainable development targets to replace the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 was agreed at the summit on 25 September.

Austerity driven Europe could miss UN development goals

Eradicate extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education and combat HIV. These are only a few of the proposals made by the UN in 2000 to free people from multiple deprivations. This pledge turned into the eight Millennium Development Goals. 13 years later, as Europe lives on of the worst crisis in decades, economic and fiscal pressure will see many member states missing their targets in fighting poverty reduction. Europe fears that foreign aid will be among the first casualties of long-term austerity measures.