On Wednesday 25 November, the European Parliament voted to make future development aid conditional on developing countries cooperating with the EU on migration management. This is a major innovation in MEPs’ majority vote on the report on improving the effectiveness of European development aid (331 votes in favour of the report, 294 against and 72 abstentions).
For good measure with this new approach, the resolution recalls that one of the overarching objectives of the EU’s development aid policy must also be to address the root causes of migration.
MEPs also want European development aid to be used as a broader tool for climate and environmental action, economic and trade policies and migration management.
Tomas Tobé (EPP, Sweden), Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Development and responsible for the report behind the Parliament’s resolution, welcomed the vote.
“It is an important shift away from the obsolete donor-recipient mentality we used to have”, he said.
Parliament also advocates focusing on the development of stable institutions in the EU’s neighbourhood and better coordination between EU development aid and Member States’ bilateral aid. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)