Europe Aid Development and Cooperation - Funding

Funding

EuropeAid awards grants and contracts to implement projects or activities that relate to the European Union’s external aid programmes. For more details consult the "Funding Pages". To ensure that EuropeAid's work to improve people’s lives is recognised, a set of visibility guidelines have been produced. These guidelines ensure that aid projects acknowledge the funding support they receive from Commission budgets. They also help to raise the general profile of the EU across the world.

Development aid is financed directly by the EU budget (70%) as part of the financial instruments for external action and also by the European Development Fund (EDF) (30%). The EU's external action financing is divided into 'geographic' and 'thematic' instruments. The 'geographic' instruments provide aid through the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI, €16.9 billion, 2007–2013), which must spend 95% of its budget on overseas development assistance (ODA), and from the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which contains some relevant programmes. The EDF (€22.7 bn, 2008–2013) is made up of voluntary contributions by EU Member States. There is currently a debate on whether to 'budgetise' the EDF. The perceived advantages include:

• contributions would be based on GNI and this may increase the currently voluntary contributions
• the harmonisation of EU budget and EDF administration might decrease administration costs and increase aid effectiveness
• an all-Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific countries geographic strategy is no longer relevant as programmes are more localised to regions or country-level
• there would be increase democratic control and parliamentary scrutiny

The perceived disadvantages are that:

• 90% of EDF resources reach low-income countries as opposed to less than 40% of aid from the EU budget development instruments
• a loss of aid predictability and aid quality as the EU budget is annual, unlike the 6-year budget of the EDF