Brussels, 24/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - CONCORD, the biggest European confederation of relief and development NGOs, warns that when it comes to overseas development assistance (ODA), the European Union is off to a bad start as regards its ambitions for 2030 - which are guided by the new global development agenda to which it has signed up.
Published on Tuesday 24 November, CONCORD's AidWatch report, which for the tenth consecutive year assesses the quantity and quality of European aid, sounds the alarm bell. The report shows that the EU is far from reaching its ODA objective for 2015 (0.7% of its GNI), and that increasing numbers of European states recycle their development assistance for purposes other than development, and withdraw the interest gained from their loans to developing countries.
The report - “Looking to the future, don't forget the past - aid beyond 2015” - highlights that with 0.42% of its GNI allocated collectively to ODA in 2014, the EU is well below the 0.7% target to which it was committed for 2015. Only four member states (Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and the UK) have reached or improved upon this target. The OECD report had already shown this (see EUROPE 11291 and 11290).
“Agenda 2030 will require ambitious financing from all actors (…) What's been lacking to date is real action from most - though certainly not all - of the donor community to meet their own commitments and promises on aid which we've seen again this year as the EU misses its own 2015 target to deliver on the 0.7% promise (…) To ensure the new development framework delivers as expected, the EU should reach the 0.7% target by 2020 in line with the commitment made in Addis”, said Amy Dodd, the CONCORD AidWatch chair and director of UK Aid Network.
Aid for doing everything. The EU member states' development assistance budgets are increasingly diverted from their sustainable development objective and used to cover the costs of migration. This comes out of the figures published by those who agree to play the game of transparency (the Netherlands 145%, Italy 107%, Cyprus 65% and Portugal 38%). Luxembourg, Poland and Bulgaria have already decided not to report on the refugee costs accounted as development assistance - unlike Spain, Malta and Hungary which have said they are ready to do this. “The world's poorest should not foot the bill for the refugee costs in Europe”, says Jessica Poh-Janrell from CONCORD Sweden.
The member states often use accounting tricks on the costs of refugees and asylum seekers, costs assigned to students, related aid, interests on loans and debt relief. The result is that although development assistance should be a real transfer of resources to developing countries, the EU artificially inflated its aid by some €7.1 billion in 2014, which represents 12% of the total aid flow to ODA.
“Effective aid, coupled with greater policy coherence for development on fiscal issues, could provide a great boost to development efforts in developing countries”, says Jeroen Kwakkenbos from Eurodad. He adds that the Addis Ababa Agenda recognises the importance of effective, progressive and fair tax systems in the fight against poverty and inequality.
Aid alibi. EU aid is still considered as a tool to drive policy change or the liberalisation of an economy in the partner countries, and it largely remains directly linked to a publicised or suggested policy agenda.
Greenwashed aid. The member states' trend to greenwash the EU's aid commitments for keeping pledges of climate funding for developing countries brings the risk of re-labelling existing aid commitments in order to call them climate funding. Yet the growing costs of climate change should not replace existing development priorities, says CONCORD. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)