ONE welcomes EU’s leading role supporting education

5 December 2017 – Brussels. Today, Neven Mimica, European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, announced EU’s additional contribution of €100 million to the Global Partnership for Education.

Valentina Barbagallo, Brussels Policy and Advocacy Manager at ONE, said: “Today the EU took a pathfinding step as the first donor to pledge additional €100 million to the Global Partnership for Education. This is great news for all the children in need of an education  – particularly for the 130 million girls who are currently out of school. This ambitious pledge should now inspire EU member states and other donors to follow suit.

As President Juncker remarked at the AU-EU summit last week, investments in education are key to harness the potential of Africa’s doubling population and provide job opportunities and growth for Africa and Europe’s youth.”

ENDS

Notes to editors

For information and interviews: Guadalupe Casas +32 (0)472 71 74 20 / [email protected]

The EU support to the Global Partnership for Education has contributed to enable 64 million more children to be enrolled in primary school in 2014 compared with 2002. The number of children completing primary school has also gone up to 73% in 2014, compared with 63% in 2002.

European Commission press release 5/12/17: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-5103_en.htm?locale=en