PARIS — The director-general of the French Development Agency Rémy Rioux, says his new book is an attempt to breathe new life into development cooperation — a sector that “we love” but which needs a “coup de jeune,” or a “shot in the arm.”
“Réconciliations,” out in English in September, is partly a riposte to the United States’ new aid strategy. For aid watchers in the European Union, however, it is also a useful guide to what one of its major players thinks should happen next. It comes as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development looks to press further into Africa, and the European Commission and European Investment Bank — mooted as a future climate bank by the commission’s next potential leader — struggle for control of EU investments abroad.
“EBRD … has largely achieved its mission since [the former Soviet states in Eastern Europe] adopted market economies and democratic principles,” Rioux writes. “The EIB, by contrast, is essentially an investment bank in infrastructure. A rapprochement of these two institutions to create a single development institution would make a lot of sense. On the condition that the new entity did not try to become a ‘World Bank of Europe’, but instead served as the glue between and in the service of development institutions of [EU] member states...”