How to read Europe's future development vision

A 20-page thunderclap hit European development watchers this week when Politico published the European Commission's draft vision for how its development policy should look for the next five years. However, anyone “truly shocked" — as the NGO confederation CONCORD claimed to be — by the document’s plan for development assistance to be recast as “investment” in a three-part offer (together with trade and macroeconomic assistance) to countries in the global south has not been paying attention. The commission has been talking like this for years. Even the chair of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee admitted in a December 2022 interview that “there has never been, in history, ODA [official development assistance] that has not had some kind of foreign and security policy objectives.” Ultimately, the proof is in the projects. The brief The leaked “Briefing Book” for the next European Union executive is a chance for the current civil servants to set the tone for their future political masters who will take office later this year through to 2029. It speaks of the need to "[engage] our strategic partners with a policy mix driven by economic interest, and less so by more traditional and narrow development and foreign policy approaches." That's kryptonite to NGOs, who rush to remind the EU of its treaty obligation to make poverty eradication the main compass for its development work. But this kind of language is not new. In early 2022, Michele Cervone d’Urso from the European External Action Service told the European Parliament that the EU’s Global Gateway strategy to promote green, sustainable, transformational investments was “beyond development aid” even while the Sustainable Development Goals were “at the forefront of everything that we do.” Gateway to hell The “Global Gateway” gives European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen something to talk about at G7 meetings when Western countries fret about their answer to China’s Belt and Road initiative. The problem? The commission has, to some extent, brought a knife to a gunfight by announcing a strategy to do transformational projects based on a budgetary instrument for 2021-2027 (first proposed in May 2018) full of geographic and thematic spending targets. That includes migration (10%), human development (20%), and climate (30%) — plus 93% of the instrument (with a name too long and boring to repeat here) has to be eligible to be counted as official development assistance. Meanwhile, the overall pie is vulnerable to being raided, most recently to the tune of €2.6 billion (about $2.8 billion.) None of the following ideas were in the document, but a few that would be shocking to see for the 2028-2034 budget would be: • A massive cut in overall EU development assistance. • A major increase in the amount of money reserved for the European Investment Bank’s sovereign lending. • An explicit return to tied aid in order to support European companies’ global reach. • Ditching or substantially lowering the proportion of EU overseas spending that must be eligible to be counted as ODA. • A list of countries or sectors where the commission will no longer work. Major European donor countries, like France, have the luxury of declaring priority countries where they think their aid can deliver the most value, either diplomatically or developmentally. The curse of the commission is to feel that because it represents the EU as a whole, it has to be everywhere. By definition, given the pressure on development budgets, that consigns it to sending what EU officials disparagingly call “homeopathic” amounts of aid far and wide. You cannot ensure free and fair elections in Zimbabwe with just $5 million — to give just one recent example. The briefing book sees the problem. “We are still too often trying to do ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’, and avoid arbitration,” it stated. But then curiously it goes on to list the strategic importance to the EU of almost every region on earth — from the Pacific islands to Greenland. Assuming its external spending stays largely the same in the next budget cycle, the only option for a commission seeking more impact in some places would be to do less in others. The document mentions the need to end becoming aid-receiving countries' "partner of convenience on many niceties." It would be nice — and perhaps shocking — to know what the commission considers nice but dispensable. Habeas impact Even mandated spending targets only go so far. In an era where some donors count support for hotels, airports, and ice cream shops toward their climate finance assistance to lower-income countries, it’s incumbent on aid advocates to look at the details — where they can. The leaked document confirms the commission’s current direction to stop communicating about every project and program in favor of a “full political campaigning approach.” Whatever that means, it appears to leave significant space for local NGOs, and journalists, to probe what is actually happening in aid-receiving countries. Is it new? Is it green? Is it transformational? Is it building greater mutually beneficial partnerships of equals? From aborted highways through nondemocratic Eritrea to trying to communicate with global youth through an empty metaverse, the last few years have shown that it is in the granular detail that the commission’s claims to be achieving a “paradigm shift” in development policy are most suspect. How was an EU-supported cross-border crime unit used in Senegal to suppress democratic protests? Why spend €848,000 to help Rwanda — a country with a very poor record on democracy and human rights — with its national branding strategy? Such scrutiny is not always easy. The new president of EIB said earlier this month, in response to a question from Devex, that the bank cannot reveal even some public sector projects before they are signed. But as long as the debate remains on the abstract level, the house always wins. This week, Devex asked Jutta Urpilainen — the former NGO board member and current EU development commissioner — about the leaked briefing paper and whether EU policy should favor the bloc’s trade and investment interests over tackling poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals. “We have to have a very balanced and comprehensive approach,” she replied, sticking to generalities. “And it has to be also very much aligned with the SDGs.” There is a lot to play for in EU development policy in coming years, but the battle should be fought transparently based on what is really happening. An overreliance on and overreaction to rhetoric will lead everyone off course. Anna Gawel contributed reporting.