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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

The current situation is as the hon. Gentleman outlined. Some of the biggest recipients of aid from Europe include the Maghreb countries, Egypt, Sudan and Morocco. It is because of the large amounts of aid that those countries receive that relatively less, as a proportion of European aid as a whole, goes to the poorest countries. The status quo permits a greater proportion of European Community development assistance to go to countries that are not the least developed. With the change in the treaty, we now have a lever to use in the European Union to ensure that that policy changes and that a greater proportion of aid goes to the least developed countries, which need it most.