HISTORIC PRESS RELEASE : Chancellor Gordon Brown and Clare Short call on the EU to Help the World´s Poorest Countries [April 1999]

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 16 April 1999.

The UK Government has today called on the EU to make their contribution to meeting the costs of providing faster, wider and deeper debt relief for the world’s poorest countries.

The Chancellor Gordon Brown and the International Development Secretary Clare Short have written to the European Commission have written with two suggestions:

• an EC contribution, at country level, to the multilateral debt funds set up to help countries such as Mozambique meet their debt servicing costs in advance of receipt of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief; or
• an EC contribution directly to the HIPC Trust Fund.