The European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jozef Síkela, reaffirmed the European Union’s commitment to “win-win” partnerships at the G7 ministerial meeting in Paris on Wednesday 29 April.
True to the line he has been defending since autumn 2024, the Commissioner is promoting an approach based on the mutual benefits of the EU’s development agreements (see EUROPE 13513/10). At the same time, the contraction in national development budgets continued in 2025 (see EUROPE 13846/10), progressively relegating European public funding to the role of a lever designed to mobilise private investment.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which began in 2025, was brutal, leading to the closure of thousands of humanitarian programmes around the world (see EUROPE 13617/5).
Faced with the scale of the humanitarian needs, the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy are now seeking common ground on the future of international aid.
“If we take a step back in history, we will realise that the development community has already experienced a number of upheavals and paradigm shifts”, noted the French Minister for La Francophonie and International Partnerships, Éléonore Caroit, on Wednesday morning.
“The important thing is to perceive and accompany these historic changes. For the G7, this is an opportunity to prove its ability to lead in the world of tomorrow”, said Ms Caroit, who, as part of the French Presidency of the G7, intends to focus the efforts of the world’s major powers on their “lines of convergence”.
An official “new approach” is due to be presented on Thursday 30 April, at the end of a second day of ministerial discussions.
Representing the EU, Commissioner Síkela will on Thursday present the ‘Global Green Bond Initiative Fund’, recently launched by the European Commission (see EUROPE 13856/9), and will discuss ways of building resilience to natural disasters in vulnerable countries, for example through early warning systems.
$100 million for Chernobyl. On the sidelines of the G7 summit, the United States announced on Wednesday that it would raise $100 million to restore the arch of the sarcophagus at Chernobyl (Ukraine), damaged by a Russian attack in 2025. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)