Key messages and findings:
Aid quantity:
- Despite growing humanitarian and development challenges, such as the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, EU aid is off track to meet the 0.7% aid target in 2015 with a funding gap of €41billion.
- Only 4 EU countries are meeting aid targets: the UK, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg.
- In 2013, approximately €5.2 billion of the aid reported by EU countries was "inflated"
- EU countries made approximately €1bn in interest from loans to development countries in 2013.
- In 2013, total aid from the EU-28 was €53.6 billion, in nominal terms an increase of €2.9 billion on the previous year. This amount is marginally higher than the amount recorded in 2010 (€53.5 billion). Once adjusted for inflation, however, 2014 aid levels stands at just €48.4 billion, far from the peak registered in 2010 (€55.9 billion)
Aid quality:
- EU donors have made little progress with publishing plans for implementing the IATI by 2015. Only nine EU member states and the EC are currently implementing their plans and publishing data in accordance with the IATI standard.
- The EU has expanded joint programming to 40 countries and plans to extend it to further 12 in next three years. Joint programming represents a promising shift from EU donor's driven aid to aid based on a country's own development strategy.
- The EU channeled 50% of its aid through country systems in 2012. However nine EU donors, mostly from the EU-13, do not make use of country systems. To performers with more than 70% of aid channeled via country systems are Ireland, France, Denmark and Finland.
- Almost 80% of EU aid is untied and some countries are leading the way by having their aid fully untied such as Ireland and the UK
Source: CONCORD Europe