Many thanks...

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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Austria`s non-reached development goals and it`s poor military

As one of the richest countries in Europe it seems to not reach the 0.7%-Goal deliberately. The money spent on development aid constantly decreased in the last years and reached a new minimum in 2009, with only 0.42% of Austria`s GDP. As if it wasn`t enough to no reach the goal, Austria is even cheating on the aid-recieving countries by giving almost half of it`s development aid in dept releases, which is by far the highest number in Europe. NGOs that have an eye one Austria`s donor behaviour claim, that the percentage of development aid shrinks to not more than 0.2% of the GDP after discounting debt releases and costs for immigrant assistence in Austria. In 2003 a pressure group was found, to force the austrian government to at least try to reach the 0.7-Goal with no to middling success.
The military spendings of Austria have stagnated in the last few years at about 2.7% of the GDP, which means about 2 Billion € per year in absolute numbers. If you look at the fact, that Austria is surrounded by EU countries this is an absurdly high amount, but in fact the Austrian armed forces have way to few money. It`s even that bad, that they had to sell some of their caserns and other buildings, so we probably need a proper reform of our army before we can talk about decreasing military spendings

Picture above: Poor austrian soldier not even having a gun

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