L’Union européenne : un champion en trompe l’œil de l’aide publique au développement

The European Union tops the ranking of the main contributors to the official development assistance (ODA) in almost all the developing and transition countries. Its disbursements are higher than those of the United States and the Japan. This status as first contributor is not only based on the gross...

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Autor principal: Yann Richard
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
FR
PT
Publicado: Confins 2008
Materias:
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/f5bfb92f008449768121700060f705d9
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Sumario:The European Union tops the ranking of the main contributors to the official development assistance (ODA) in almost all the developing and transition countries. Its disbursements are higher than those of the United States and the Japan. This status as first contributor is not only based on the gross amounts of money dedicated to the official assistance. It is also based on the amounts of money disbursed related to the gross national income and to the population of the European states. Nevertheless, this status is partly an illusion. The domination of the European Union comes from the artificial addition of the assistance provided by the European Commission (multilateral) and the assistance disbursed by the member states of the former UE 15 (bilateral). A detailed analysis of the data provided by the OECD shows that these to donors do not follow the same lines as regards the geographical allocation of their assistance. Besides, when it comes to the geography of the assistance delivered by the European Union, it looks more universal that those delivered by the United States and Japan. Isn’t it a sign of weakness and incoherence? One can wonder whether the ODA of the EU does not suffer form an excessive dissemination. Last, the geographical distribution of the European assistance is not really consistent with the official political agenda of the EU strongly oriented towards the issue of the development of the neighbouring countries. This lack of coherence is revealed by the opposite evolutions of the aids disbursed in the neighbourhood by the Commission and the EU members. The former has been increasing since the 1990s whereas the latter has been dramatically decreasing over the last fifteen years. The EU has launched a profound reform of its official assistance governance in line with the Paris Declaration and the implementation of the Millenium Development Goals. But much is still to be done before to reach the objective addressed by this reform. The European Union still appears unable to exert a strong political influence through it official assistance, even in its own neighbourhood where the United States play a strong and eventually more visible role.