European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, announced the fully-fledged resumption of development aid in Mali at the Informal Development Ministers meeting held on February 12 in Dublin. He also underlined that some €250 million may be mobilised for restarting gradually development aid in order to respond to the urgent needs of the Malian people.

Following the coup d’état of last year's March, the European Commission had adopted precautionary measures limiting aid programmes to direct support to the local population, to assisting the transition to democracy and to humanitarian aid. On February 12, European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, announced the fully-fledged resumption of development aid in Mali at the Informal Development Ministers meeting. Recently, the European Commission also announced that the EU will allocate €50 million to support an African-led peace operation (AFISMA) in Mali.

EU efforts to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities in the Horn of Africa and in the Sahel region to cope with natural disasters and crisis, was also one of the points upon discussion at the meeting. With regard to the Mali crisis, Commissioner Piebalgs announced that the development aid will focus on food security, water and sanitation and make new proposals to help relaunching the economy.

The consequences of the agreement reached at the European Council on the development budget under the EU Multiannual Financial Framework was also discussed at the meeting. Commissioner Piebalgs underlined that cuts to the EU aid budget compared to the original proposal of the European Commission mean that EU individual member states will need to increase their own national development budget in order for the EU to respect its global commitment to allocate at 0.7 per cent of our Gross National Income (GNI) for development purposes by 2015. Commissioner also stressed that falling short of that objective, the European ability to achieve the best results in development will be affected.