Assessing European Union’s Development Policy: Building the Bridge Between Rhetoric and Deeds

Abstract

This paper covers the topic of European Union (EU)’s development policy, focusing exclusively on the actions taken by the European institutions. It is argued here that despite the official rhetoric of the Union to support primarily least-developed states, development aid is distributed predominantly to states where the EU has geopolitical/colonial/trade interests, and major shares of aid are actually granted to advanced countries, rather than for poverty alleviation. This contribution analyses the strengths and weaknesses of this policy considering the current global challenges and which countries are entitled to bigger shares of development aid and why. The focus of this article is placed on the inconsistent guiding logic behind aid allocation in the EU. Furthermore, the thesis outlines a new ‘pro-poor’ approach that would align the implementation of the policy with the existing commitments. The main conclusion is that if the Union does not shift its actions towards poorer states as officially promised, it will undermine its aspirations for global actorness.

Keywords

• European development policy
• allocated sums
• shifting aid priorities
• ‘pro-poor’ approach