The European Commission, the world’s second largest aid donor, will come under fire from a prominent development campaigner on Wednesday for its slowness in disbursing funds.

Save the Children, the UK-based charity, will report that delays by rich countries in distributing aid already pledged threaten to undermine the development process in many needy nations. They jeopardise attainment of the millennium development goals to halve extreme poverty by 2015, it adds.