“Sustainable development is unrealizable if due account is not taken of the ethical dimension”, but in the existing documents of the European Union the presence of this dimension “seems to us inadequate”. So writes Keith Jenkins, director of the Church and Society Commission of the KEK (Conference of European Churches) in a letter sent to the current president of the EU, Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, on the eve of the meeting of the heads of state and of government planned for Barcelona on 15 and 16 March. In particular, the Churches of the KEK (127 of Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant and Old-Catholic tradition) express to President Aznar their “disappointment at the decision recently taken by some member states of the EU to reject the proposal to allocate 0.33% of their GDP to state aid to development from now till 2006”. In their letter the member Churches of KEK once again underline their conviction that it is utterly insufficient to define development merely “in terms of material wealth and economic growth”, without recognizing that “there are environmental limits” to growth and without tackling “the question of social justice”. Equitable economic development add the Churches must also take account of the European states that are not yet members of the EU. Nor must it lose sight of the developing countries.
