Germany’s Third Voluntary National Review (VNR) to the HLPF 2025

    VNR 2025 Contribution by VENRO

    Financing for sustainable development: Germany needs to accept its international responsibility and take action on the basis of solidarity

    Global social inequality continues to deepen – and with it, human suffering. In order to effectively reduce hunger and poverty and ensure that investments are made in health, education, climate action and gender equality, at least 4 trillion US dollars needs to be mobilised every year. To make this funding available, comprehensive reforms must be made to the international financial system, and the countries of the Global North must exercise greater solidarity.

    Many countries in the Global South are now spending more than 15 per cent of their government revenue on servicing debt to private and institutional creditors. At the same time, their options for increasing tax revenue are limited. They urgently need more support to fight tax evasion and corruption. There is also a lack of international agreements that would help them to take more effective action against tax avoidance and harmful tax competition. Multinational corporations and the ultra-wealthy are avoiding tax or have to pay much lower tax rates than average income earners. Simultaneously, the countries of the Global North, faced with economic challenges of their own and shifting political priorities, are massively cutting funding for Official Development Assistance (ODA) and humanitarian assistance. The German government alone has cut this funding by more than 50 per cent. The German government needs to accept its international responsibility and act accordingly.

    The German government should therefore

    • support a fair and transparent multilateral debt relief mechanism that includes all countries and lays down legally binding regulations for the entire debt cycle. Legal obligations should be created for private creditors to take part in debt restructuring;
    • advance the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation so that it will deliver redistributional and gender-transformative impacts. The German government should also support the wealth tax for the super-rich demanded by the G20, and an internationally harmonised overall corporate tax rate for multinational corporations;
    • increase German funding for international climate finance, from 2025, by an annual minimum of eight to ten billion euros over and above existing development funding. These resources should benefit, above all, the most vulnerable population groups, so that Germany will contribute its fair share to achieving the new global collective climate finance goal of 300 billion US dollars by 2035;
    • meet its commitment of keeping official development assistance at a level of at least 0.7 per cent of gross national income (ODA ratio) and providing at least 0.2 per cent of gross national income for the least developed countries (LDCs).



    See also