Ignoring the elephant in the room? Assessing the impact of the European Union on the Development Assistance Committee's role in international development

Abstract

This article studies the impact of the European Union (EU) on the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). While the literature thus far has focused on the external challenges for the DAC's role in international development, this study argues that the EU should be taken into account as well. By focusing on the cases of policy coherence for development and the concessionality of official development assistance (ODA) loans, we show that the EU poses a structural challenge for the DAC's role in international development given the strong overlap in membership between both institutions and the Union's changing nature as a development actor.

United in diversity? Analysing behaviour expectations of the European Union as a non-state member of the OECD’s development assistance committee

“…While best known for the annual figures on ODA that it adopts, the DAC has also had an important normative role in promoting principles for effective development cooperation. For example, over the past six decades, the DAC has pioneered important development concepts such as (un)tied aid, donor coordination, alignment and policy coherence for development (Verschaeve & Orbie, 2017). In addition, the DAC also serves as a policy evaluator for its members, conducting periodic peer reviews of their development programmes in order to identify best practices as well as areas where improvements can be made (Ashoff, 2013).…”

“…Moreover, in advocating the EIB loans the EU seemed more interested in the size of its own ODA-eligible contributions, and less in increasing the quality of ODA as per the ambition in the previous Consensus (EU, 2006). The discussion on the EIB loans put a strain on the relation between the EU and the OECD's Development Cooperation Directorate supporting the DAC's discussions (see Verschaeve & Orbie, 2017). Beyond the DAC, there was increasing controversy around the latter group's use of 'profitable loans', in the sense that interest rates were so low that some donors were issuing loans when (assuming repayment) they would make a profit on their ODA (Roodman, 2015).…”

“…Beyond the DAC, there was increasing controversy around the latter group's use of 'profitable loans', in the sense that interest rates were so low that some donors were issuing loans when (assuming repayment) they would make a profit on their ODA (Roodman, 2015). Furthermore, on several topicsmost notably the issue of concessional loansthe DAC struggled for several years, leading to some observers openly questioning the Committee's ability to deal with the monitoring of aid flows (Verschaeve & Orbie, 2017).…”

“…Several interviewees noted that whereas the EU was previously strongly engaged in promoting effective development cooperation, including by adopting specific EU ambitions that went beyond the level of ambition agreed in the Paris Declaration (EU, 2006), its current positions seemed to mainly serve its own interests as a donor and global actor more generally. 30 When this concerned aspect such as the concessionality discussion where the EU's position was not unambiguously seen as 'developmental', this was seen to negatively affect the EU's legitimacy as a member of the DAC (Verschaeve & Orbie, 2017). 31…”

Small Donors in World Politics: The Role of Trust Funds in the Foreign Aid Policies of Central and Eastern European Donors

“…The literature on small states in global politics highlights that they face severe structural limitations due to their size and resources in influencing international negotiations, and need to rely on various counter-balancing strategies to make up for these deficiencies, such as alliance building and normative suasion (Panke, 2012). There is evidence from organizations such as the IMF and the OECD DAC that if small countries speak with a united voice, they can alter development discourse and policy (Kentikelenis and Seabrooke, 2017;Verschaeve and Orbie, 2018). With multi-bi aid, one solution is to pool small donor voices through informal institutions, such as the Visegrad Four (V4), a loose framework for cooperation between the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.…”