Seville Debt & Austerity: Southern Spain Struggles

But finding these trillions is more difficult today than ever, as shown by the great absence of the summit. The United States has retired from the debate and have decided not to attend the Seville meeting after completely dismantling their USAID Development Aid, which provided more than 40% of global development funding. And it is in this context that the rest of the UN countries have approved on Monday, in the opening plenary session of the summit, the commitment of Seville, a 38 -page document that had to be used to promote a structural reform of the development system for development. The final document, but “is far from what civil society requested and that the world needed,” said Iolanda Fresnillo, a representative of the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), one of the observant organizations.

At a time when the main world powers have pledged to raise up to 5% of GDP, their investment in weapons, the average for cooperation for the development of rich countries is 0.47% of GDP and only four countries (Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden) meet or exceed 0.7%. The Government of Spain, host of the summit, is one of the few who still maintains this commitment of 0.7% by 2030, but in practice it still allocates 0.35%. Spanish President Pedro Sánchez has called for Seville to serve “to straighten the course” in the field of international cooperation and to bet again on “multilateralism”. Guterres has also called for an increase in development funding by rich countries, but the reality is that Trump is not the only government that is cutting out development aid, so many European countries have done so in the last year.

“The negotiations [pel document, que s’han dut a terme en els últims mesos] They have been very intense and very tense. The United States has been absent most of the process, but the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland or Canada have pressured a lot to dilute the agreement, “Fresnillo denounced a press conference before the summit.

La Crisi del Deute, a CLAU theme

One of the most disappointed points in Seville’s commitment is the renegotiation of debt in poor countries. At a time when some southern governments are forced to allocate more money to pay the debt interests than in health or education, the main claim for this summit – on the part of these countries and civil society – was to give more voice and vote to debt governments. The creation of a Framework Framework Convention on Debt, a forum (similar to the climate coup), where a condition of all members of the UN was neglected, a possible reform of the loan system and the renegotiation of the debt for the states that have entered or at risk of failure.

“ All this right now is decided at the OECD, the G-20 or the Club of Paris, exclusive spaces where the creditors dominate, and it is they who impose the conditions, so we wanted it to be negotiated in the framework of the UN, a multilateral space where all countries have the same voice: a country, a vote, ” says Nicola Scherer, a researcher at the Observatory in Debt Observatory. But that has not been achieved. Seville’s commitment only includes the promise of opening an “intergovernmental process for making recommendations” in this area.

However, for Guterres, “Seville’s commitment establishes the foundations” for a “fair restructuring and timely debt”, because it “creates a unique register of debt in the name of transparency, and promotes responsible loan and debt practices”, among other points.

The Global South and the NGOs also claimed to create another UN framework convention to generally negotiate the international cooperation system, as “right now the southern countries also do not participate in the definition of the rules of the game” of this system, says Scherer. But that has not been included in the final document either.

In the positive side there are some “slits” that open the document approved in Seville, such as the one that opens in the field of “taxation”, where governments like that of Brazil are trying to promote a commitment to raise taxes to the richest. “There is a breakthrough in terms of reforms to achieve fiscal justice,” admits Scherer. But in general, the expert also considers that “Seville’s commitment is a victory in the countries of the North Global, because they have managed to maintain thesituation when In many places against what they were asking for from the south, which were more structural reforms. “In fact, in addition to governments and NGOs, in Seville there are also representatives from other sectors involved in this development financing such as” large investment funds such as Blackrock, also interested in the fact that the rules of the game do not change “.