Belgian development chief says aid is ‘not charity’ as possible cut looms

The head of the Belgian federal development agency Enabel has defended the country’s development spending as an exercise partly in self-interest after reports that a new governing coalition could make cuts to foreign aid. Belgian media reported last week that negotiators trying to form a new government following elections in June were considering an economic plan designed to save €13.5 billion (about $15 billion). Under the plan, L’Echo reported that €636 million from the development budget currently paid by the federal government would instead be assigned to Belgium’s eight local and regional authorities — though there is no assurance they would be willing or able to pay. The right-wing New Flemish Alliance, or NVA, which came first in the June elections and whose leader Bart De Wever had been leading negotiations on a new government — before resigning last week — did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For now, a mediator from the centrist party Les Engagés is in charge of trying to bring five negotiating parties — ranging from center-left to right-wing — back to the table for talks. Yet there is no guarantee that the savings of €13.5 billion, proposed by De Wever, will be accepted, nor that the cut to development spending will remain as high as €636 million. Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported that the country’s cooperation budget is around €1.2 billion per year, with €500-€600 million in multilateral assistance and €220 million for Enabel. The rest is shared between humanitarian aid and NGOs. Belgium spent 0.44% of its gross national income on official development assistance last year, according to the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, data — below the United Nations’ 0.7% target, but above the donor average of 0.37%. That made it the 13th most generous donor as a proportion of GNI. Cutting its cooperation budget would lead to Belgium being marginalized and “completely decredibilized on the international scene,” Enabel CEO Jean Van Wetter wrote on LinkedIn. He laid out several arguments for maintaining aid spending, touching on growing humanitarian needs worldwide, but couched mostly in terms of self-interest. With Europe’s population and productivity in decline, “we need the rest of the world in order to keep developing ourselves,” he wrote, citing Africa’s young population and potential workforce, its uncultivated, arable land, solar power potential, minerals “critical for the energy transition,” and ideal locations for capturing and storing carbon. “International cooperation is not charity,” Van Wetter added. “There is a direct return on investment in terms of jobs, but also contracts for Belgian companies. We estimate for example that Belgian companies sell each year many hundreds of millions of euros of goods and services to international organizations.” Should the cuts go ahead they would follow a spate of major European donors slashing aid budgets of late, including the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Germany, and the European Union itself. That bodes badly for what the Center for Global Development has called a “traffic jam” of upcoming replenishments for initiatives such as the International Development Association, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, through to 2025.