Special emphasis has been placed on the fact that, although the SEEA cooperation law provides for this, the administration is not allocating 0.7 per cent of its budget to international development. According to the data they have disseminated, both the Basque Government and the provincial councils of the Basque Country, as well as the municipalities of the three capitals, use amounts below this percentage for cooperation, in some cases far from the objective.

In all cases, moreover, the percentages have decreased since 2008 and in only three of the seven entities mentioned have increased compared to last year. “After years of cuts and adaptations, little progress has been made in cooperation policies in some institutions in 2017, but these policies are still stagnant and there is no clear sign of recovery,” said the NGO Coordinator.

It is noteworthy that tax revenues in the Basque Country have increased by 1.2% and that, on the other hand, the percentage of the budget allocated by the Government to cooperation remains at 0.39%: “Although global budgets increase, this trend is not reflected in cooperation.” The NGOs stress that the use of the 0.7% percentage for this purpose is not only a mandate of the law, but also “fair and moral” and recall that the United Nations has recently reaffirmed this objective.