Since its foundation, the European Union has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most benevolent providers of development aid to some of the world’s poorest nations. In 2022, the bloc and its member states spent a total of 98 billion euros, or roughly $120 billion, on development and humanitarian funding, making the EU once again the world’s largest aid donor.
Behind the headline numbers, however, a more complex and self-serving picture of the bloc’s aid policy was revealed last April, when a European Commission briefing document that advocated for linking development aid decisions to the bloc’s strategic interests was leaked to the media. The document was roundly criticized by development agencies, including CONCORD, the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development, which derided its contents as “a sellout of international cooperation.”
While the leaked document is unusually explicit in its language, emphasizing the need to engage the EU’s strategic partners “with a policy mix driven by economic interest” rather than traditional development approaches, the general thrust of the text can hardly have come as a complete surprise. After all, as Vince Chadwick—a senior reporter at DEVEX—points out, the commission has been “telegraphing its desire to align foreign aid with strategic interests for quite some time.”