The European Union’s Development Aid: from Development to Security, the Example of the European Development Fund

Summary:

In the course of its institutional development and the expansion of its activities, the European Union (EU) has tended to pile up rather than to rationalize its policies, creating a financial tool per objective. As a result, the European funds have become a labyrinth, for which management costs are high.

The external activities of the EU do not escape this trend, because their multiple objectives defined by the former EU’s High Representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, as “promoting our own values and fundamental interest such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law, but also… as contributing to the struggle against poverty, to peace-keeping and the resolution of conflicts in the world” are based on 9 or 10 different instruments, some of them described as “geographical” and others as “thematic”: the Financing Instrument for Development Cooperation (DCI), the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), the Instrument for Stability (IfS) and the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), etc. The fields and geographical areas of intervention of these tools overlap and account for a total of 96.2 thousand million euros for the period 2014-2020.

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