Haiti and the Millennium Development Goals will top the agenda at the Informal EU Development Council taking place on 17 and 18 February in La Granja, Segovia, ahead of a UN review of MDG progress and the Foreign Affairs Council, on 22 February.

The Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Rajiv Shah, will attend the Council meeting as a guest, along with the President of the European Parliament’s Development Committee (DEVE), Eva Joly, to coordinate plans for the reconstruction effort in the earthquake-stricken Caribbean nation.

Decisions are unlikely to be taken on Haiti given it was recently discussed at the informal summit of EU heads of state and government, on 11 February, and is also in the diary for the Foreign Affairs Council, on 22 February. However, ongoing discussions are considered crucial as the international community attempts to cope with continuing emergency needs for the homeless and injured, new threats to survivors from the upcoming rainy season and longer-term planning for the country’s reconstruction.

Development ministers will prepare for the Millennium Development Goals review at the UN in New York in September, which marks ten years since they were created. The European and North American representatives will hold a working session on transatlantic relations and development. The meetings, to be chaired by Spanish Secretary of State for International Cooperation Soraya Rodríguez, will also cover the effectiveness criteria for development aid, the international division of labour and innovative financing mechanisms in fiscal governance for development.