Friday, July 14, 2017
Forehall (University of Glasgow)
The EU actively promotes its image as the largest provider of Official Development Assistance (ODA) as a key feature of its responsibility for global sustainable development. Together with the European Union as a self-standing member, the EU Member States together make up 20 of the 29 members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee which set the rules and standards for what can be reported as ODA. Negotiations resulting in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as adopted in September 2015 included a key focus on determining the extent to which ODA, developed in a context of ‘north-south cooperation’, was still fit for purpose for a new agenda that would be universal in nature and gradually move away from the binary distinction between developed and developing countries. This led to an agreement at the Addis Ababa Financing for Development conference that conveyed the international community’s commitment to “hold open, inclusive and transparent discussions on the modernization of the ODA measurement and on the proposed measure of “total official support for sustainable development.” This article will analyse to what extent the EU has taken steps to honour this commitment. In particular, we wonder to what extent the European Commission can today be perceived as an ‘ODA champion’, targeting quality improvements to the concept as it did with supporting the untying of aid, or rather should be seen as a ‘rule breaker’, pursuing its own interpretation of ODA and by doing so exert pressure on the concept’s legitimacy.
