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159-678: The Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) is the Secretariat of the DAC and is the OECD Directorate within which the DAC operates. As of 4 July 2023, there are 32 members of DAC (see list below), including the European Union which acts as a full member of the committee. In addition, there are "Participants" and "Observers". The listed Participants at this time are: Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia and

318-688: A European customs union for the struggling post-war European economies, and in 1923 the oldest organisation for European integration, the Paneuropean Union was founded, led by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi , who later would found in June 1947 the European Parliamentary Union (EPU). Aristide Briand —who was Prime Minister of France , a follower of the Paneuropean Union, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for

477-669: A proposal that linked funding with adherence to the rule of law . The budget included a COVID-19 recovery fund of €750   billion. The budget may still be approved if Hungary and Poland withdraw their vetoes after further negotiations in the council and the European Council . Bodies combatting fraud have also been established, including the European Anti-fraud Office and the European Public Prosecutor's Office . The latter

636-529: A " collective head of state " and ratifies important documents (for example, international agreements and treaties). Tasks for the president of the European Council are ensuring the external representation of the EU, driving consensus and resolving divergences among member states, both during meetings of the European Council and over the periods between them. The European Council should not be mistaken for

795-467: A 1991 report for the OECD, tied aid can increase development aid project costs by up to 20 or 30 percent. Other conditions include opening up the country to foreign investment, even if it might not be ready to do so. There is also criticism because donors may give with one hand, through large amounts of development aid, yet take away with the other, through strict trade or migration policies, or by getting

954-611: A Ministerial Resolution decreed that upon the supersession of the OEEC by the OECD, the DAG would become the DAC, and these changes came about in September 1961. The resolution also spelled out the DAC's mandate in five points, the first of which read: The Committee will continue to consult on the methods for making national resources available for assisting countries and areas in the process of economic development and for expanding and improving

1113-611: A broad forum to further cooperation and shared issues, achieving for example the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950. Essential for the actual birth of the institutions of the EU was the Schuman Declaration on 9 May 1950 (the day after the fifth Victory in Europe Day ) and the decision by six nations (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, West Germany and Italy) to follow Schuman and draft

1272-603: A category of ODA. The DAC computes ODA from data submitted by its member states. It also has collected some data from its participants and observers, which are often significant: in fact their donations are roughly in line with that of the DAC countries' as a fraction of donor gross national income as can be seen in the List of development aid country donors . Only aid to countries on the DAC List of ODA Recipients counts as ODA. Initially it included most developing countries. After

1431-779: A country and region-wide level gender equality aid was not significant in its effect. Swain and Garikipati blame this on the relative lack of aid with gender equality as a primary motivation. In 2005, the Interagency Gender Working Group of the World Health Organization released the "So What? Report" on the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming in NGO reproductive health programs. The report found these programs effective, but had trouble finding clear gender outcomes because most programs did not measure this data. When gender outcomes were measured,

1590-602: A definition which indicated an "ultimate goal ... to achieve gender equality". The UN included promoting gender equality and empowering women as one of eight Millennium Development Goals for developing countries. The EU integrated women in development thinking into its aid policy starting with the Lomé Convention in 1984. In 1992 the EU's Latin American and Asian development policy first clearly said that development programs should not have detrimental effects on

1749-616: A developing country, rather than short-term relief. The overarching term is foreign aid (or just aid ). The amount of foreign aid is measured though official development assistance (ODA). This is a category used by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to measure foreign aid. Aid may be bilateral : given from one country directly to another; or it may be multilateral : given by

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1908-477: A foothold for foreign corporations. The Commitment to Development Index measures the overall policies of donors and evaluates the quality of their development aid, instead of just comparing the quantity of official development assistance given. At the development level, anthropologist and researcher Jason Hickel has challenged the narrative that the rich countries of the OECD help the poor countries develop their economies and eradicate poverty. Hickel states that

2067-638: A forum for and by the bilateral donors, each donor's aid efforts are evaluated in peer reviews where major findings and recommendations are presented. Each DAC member country is reviewed roughly once every five years. More recently, the DAC has been involved in questions related to aid effectiveness . At the DAC High Level Meeting in April 2005, participants adopted the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness . Progress in implementing

2226-409: A given year that are counted towards ODA are counted net of repayments made that year on the principal of old loans, but not net of interest payments. Therefore, after a loan has been paid back its overall effect on ODA figures is zero (Its overall direct fiscal effect on the recipient is of course that the recipient has had to pay back some amount of interest). Debt forgiveness is counted explicitly as

2385-576: A higher portion of GDP as a form of foreign aid than any other economic union. The DAC’s 2020 communiqué notes by members’ efforts in responding to the COVID-19. For civil society organizations, “the OECD-DAC continues its narrative of leveraging the private sector, with only some mention of safeguards in private sector involvement”. Since its inception, one of the DAC's main functions has been to collect and publish statistics on aid flow. As noted in

2544-712: A literature review that NGOs headed by women were more likely to have Gender Mainstreaming programs and that women were often the heads of Gender Mainstreaming programs within organizations. By breaking down gender equality programs into two categories, gender mainstreamed programs and gender-focused programs which do not mainstream gender, Jones and Swiss found that female leaders of governmental aid organizations provided more financial support to gender mainstreamed programs and slightly more support to gender aware programs overall. Petra Debusscher of Ghent University has criticized EU aid agencies for following an "integrationist approach" to gender mainstreaming, where gender mainstreaming

2703-546: A permanent president of the European Council , the first of which was Herman Van Rompuy , and strengthened the position of the high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy . In 2012, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe". In 2013, Croatia became the 28th EU member. From

2862-549: A pooled military aid package to Ukraine for lethal weapons funded via the European Peace Facility off-budget instrument. Next Generation EU ( NGEU ) is a European Commission economic recovery package to support the EU member states to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic , in particular those that have been particularly hard hit. It is sometimes styled NextGenerationEU and Next Gen EU , and also called

3021-460: A possibility of strong changes in the 2024 elections. Since the end of World War II , sovereign European countries have entered into treaties and thereby co-operated and harmonised policies (or pooled sovereignty ) in an increasing number of areas, in the European integration project or the construction of Europe ( French : la construction européenne ). The following timeline outlines

3180-713: A post-war world and Europe increasingly became a part of the agenda. This led to a decision at the Yalta Conference in 1944 to form a European Advisory Commission , later replaced by the Council of Foreign Ministers and the Allied Control Council , following the German surrender and the Potsdam Agreement in 1945. By the end of the war, European integration became seen as an antidote to

3339-744: A problem to be solved for women. She found that the language used represented more of a Woman in Development approach than a Gender and Development Approach. She notes that men's role in domestic violence is insufficiently brought forward, with program and policy instead targeting removing women from victimhood. Rather than discussing the role of men and women relative to each other, women are discussed as needing to "catch up with an implicit male norm". Debussher also criticized EU's development aid to Southern Africa as too narrow in its scope and too reliant on integrating women and gender into existing aid paradigms. Debusscher notes that women's organizations in

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3498-598: A right of unilateral withdrawal under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. In addition, the principle of subsidiarity requires that only those matters that need to be determined collectively are so determined. Under the principle of supremacy , national courts are required to enforce the treaties that their member states have ratified, even if doing so requires them to ignore conflicting national law, and (within limits) even constitutional provisions. The direct effect and supremacy doctrines were not explicitly set out in

3657-732: A set number of seats and is divided into sub-national constituencies where this does not affect the proportional nature of the voting system. In the ordinary legislative procedure , the European Commission proposes legislation, which requires the joint approval of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to pass. This process applies to nearly all areas, including the EU budget . The parliament

3816-465: A study conducted among 36 sub-saharan African countries in 2013, 27 out of these 36 countries have experienced strong and favorable effects of aid on GDP and investments. Another study showed that aid per capita supports economic growth for low income African countries such as Tanzania, Mozambique and Ethiopia, while aid per capita does not have a significant effect on the economic growth of middle income African countries such as Botswana and Morocco. Aid

3975-551: A total area of 4,233,255 km (1,634,469 sq mi) and an estimated total population of over 449   million. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity combining the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation . Containing 5.8% of the world population in 2020, EU member states generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around US$ 16.6   trillion in 2022, constituting approximately one sixth of global nominal GDP . Additionally, all EU states except Bulgaria have

4134-610: A very high Human Development Index according to the United Nations Development Programme . Its cornerstone, the Customs Union , paved the way to establishing an internal single market based on standardised legal framework and legislation that applies in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where the states have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within

4293-453: A wide range of policies on seven indicators: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology. In 2009, Sweden and Denmark received the highest rankings, while Japan and South Korea fell toward the bottom. In 2010, South Korea became the first major recipient of ODA from the OECD to turn into a major donor when it became a DAC member. In 2013, the country provided over $ 1.7 billion in aid. The European Union accumulated

4452-646: Is a decentralized independent body of the European Union (EU), established under the Treaty of Lisbon between 22 of the 27 states of the EU following the method of enhanced cooperation . The European Public Prosecutor's Office investigate and prosecute fraud against the budget of the European Union and other crimes against the EU's financial interests including fraud concerning EU funds of over €10,000 and cross-border VAT fraud cases involving damages above €10 million. Member states retain in principle all powers except those that they have agreed collectively to delegate to

4611-457: Is a form of results-based financing, with similar principles as performance-based contracting . Most development aid is counted as part of the official development assistance (ODA) reported by governments to the OECD. The total amount of ODA in 2018 was about $ 150 billion. For the same year, the OECD estimated that six to seven billion dollars of aid was given by ten other states, including China and India. However, these amounts include aid that

4770-532: Is a large literature on the subject. Econometric studies in the late 20th century often found the average effectiveness of aid to be minimal or even negative. Such studies have appeared on the whole to yield more affirmative results in the early 21st century, but the picture is complex and far from clear in many respects. Starting at the beginning of the UN Decade for Women in 1975, the women in development (WID) approach to international development began to inform

4929-430: Is a secondary aspect of a project. Gender equality is often put forward as a policy goal for the organization but program staff have differing commitment and training with regards to this goal. When gender equality is a secondary aspect, development aid which has funds required to impact gender equality can be used to meet quotas of women receiving aid, without effecting the changes in gender roles that Gender Mainstreaming

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5088-629: Is a type of development cooperation, wherein OECD DAC member states or multilateral institutions provide development assistance to emergent development actors, with the aim of assisting them in carrying out development projects in other developing countries. The purpose of trilateral development cooperation is to combine the strengths of both OECD DAC member states and the new development actors in delivering more effective aid to recipient countries. The OECD DAC member states and multilateral institutions participate in trilateral development cooperation with

5247-640: Is based in Kirchberg, Luxembourg City alongside the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Auditors. Constitutionally, the EU bears some resemblance to both a confederation and a federation , but has not formally defined itself as either. (It does not have a formal constitution: its status is defined by the Treaty of European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of

5406-413: Is designed to advanced gender equality. In 2019-20 OECD DAC members committed almost $ 56.5 billion to aid for gender equality, with $ 6.3 billion of that committed to programs where gender equality is a principal programmatic goal. Three main measures of gender inequality are used in calculating gender equality and testing programs for the purposes of development aid. In the 1995 Human Development Report

5565-654: Is humanitarian in character as well as purely developmental aid. The proportion of development aid within ODA was about 80%. The OECD classifies ODA development aid by sector, the main sectors being: education, health (including population policies, water supply and sanitation), government & civil society, economic infrastructure (including transport and energy), and production (including agriculture). Additionally, there are "cross-cutting" aims; for instance, environmental protection, gender equality, urban and rural development concerns. Some governments include military assistance in

5724-467: Is inconsistent with EU law. It is not possible to appeal against the decisions of national courts in the CJEU, but rather national courts refer questions of EU law to the CJEU. However, it is ultimately for the national court to apply the resulting interpretation to the facts of any given case. Although, only courts of final appeal are bound to refer a question of EU law when one is addressed. The treaties give

5883-400: Is most beneficial to low income countries because such countries use aid received for to provide education and healthcare for citizens, which eventually improves economic growth in the long run. Some econometric studies suggest that development aid effectively reduces poverty in developing countries. Other studies have supported the view that development aid has no clear average effect on

6042-542: Is often made between development aid that is governmental ("official") on the one hand, and private (originating from individuals, businesses and the investments of charitable foundations , and often channeled through religious organisations and other NGOs ) on the other. Official aid may be government-to-government, or it may be channeled through intermediary bodies such as UN agencies , international financial institutions , NGOs or other contractors. NGOs thus commonly handle both official and private aid. Of aid reported to

6201-598: Is organised as a directorial system , where the executive power is jointly exercised by several people. The executive branch consists of the European Council and European Commission. The European Council sets the broad political direction of the Union. It convenes at least four times a year and comprises the president of the European Council (presently Charles Michel ), the president of the European Commission and one representative per member state (either its head of state or head of government ). The high representative of

6360-562: Is regulated to try to balance the aspirations of private initiatives with public interest decision-making process. The European Union had an agreed budget of €170.6  billion in 2022. The EU had a long-term budget of €1,082.5 billion for the period 2014–2020, representing 1.02% of the EU-28's GNI. In 1960, the budget of the European Community was 0.03 per cent of GDP. Of this, €54bn subsidised agriculture enterprise , €42bn

6519-512: Is the final body to approve or reject the proposed membership of the commission, and can attempt motions of censure on the commission by appeal to the Court of Justice . The president of the European Parliament carries out the role of speaker in Parliament and represents it externally. The president and vice-presidents are elected by MEPs every two and a half years. The judicial branch of

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6678-485: Is then able to recruit staff from among the pool of candidates selected by EPSO. On average, EPSO receives around 60,000–70,000 applications a year with around 1,500–2,000 candidates recruited by the European Union institutions. The European Ombudsman is the ombudsman branch of the European Union that holds the institutions, bodies and agencies of the EU to account, and promotes good administration. The Ombudsman helps people, businesses and organisations facing problems with

6837-478: Is used to achieve existing policy goals, as opposed to a "transformative approach" which seeks to change policy priorities and programs fundamentally to achieve gender equality. She finds that this approach more closely follows a Women in Development model than a Gender and Development one. Debussher criticized the EU's development policy in Latin America for focusing too much attention on gender inequality as

6996-592: The Achievements section of this article, in 1969 the DAC's members adopted a criterion for calculating their aid contributions. They called the resulting measure of aid contributions Official Development Assistance (ODA). It has become widely used by other organisations, and scholars, as a general measure of aid; for example, the United Nations and the World Bank both commonly use ODA as calculated by

7155-607: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , have partnered with governmental aid organizations to provide funds for gender equality, but increasingly aid is provided through partnerships with local organizations and NGOS. Corporations also participate in providing gender equality aid through their Corporate Social Responsibility programs. Nike helped to create the Girl Effect to provide aid programs targeted towards adolescent girls. Using publicly available data Una Osili an economist at

7314-720: The Center for Global Development is another attempt to look at broader donor country policies toward the developing world. These types of activity could be formulated and understood as a kind of development aid although commonly they are not. Output-based aid (OBA) (or results-based aid) refers to development aid strategies that link the delivery of public services in developing countries to targeted performance-related subsidies . OBA subsidies are offered in transport construction, education, water and sanitation systems, and healthcare among other sectors where positive externalities exceed cost recovery exclusively from private markets. OBA

7473-704: The Common Foreign and Security Policy , the union has developed a role in external relations and defence . It maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations , the World Trade Organization , the G7 and the G20 . Due to its global influence, the European Union has been described by some scholars as an emerging superpower . The EU

7632-669: The Council of Europe , an international organisation independent of the EU and based in Strasbourg. The European Commission acts both as the EU's executive arm , responsible for the day-to-day running of the EU, and also the legislative initiator , with the sole power to propose laws for debate. The commission is 'guardian of the Treaties' and is responsible for their efficient operation and policing. It has 27 European commissioners for different areas of policy, one from each member state, though commissioners are bound to represent

7791-547: The Court of Justice of the European Union , the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors . Competence in scrutinising and amending legislation is shared between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, while executive tasks are performed by the European Commission and in a limited capacity by the European Council (not to be confused with the aforementioned Council of

7950-496: The DAC List of ODA Recipients which includes most countries classified by the World Bank as of low and middle income. Loans from one state to another may be counted as ODA only if their terms are substantially more favourable than market terms. The exact rules for this have varied from time to time. Less-concessional loans therefore would not be counted as ODA but might be considered as including an element of development aid. Some states provide development aid without reporting to

8109-483: The Danish Institute for International Studies concluded that on the basis of the available information, the overall picture was positive. The report recommended more frequent and transparent reporting by donor countries on the status of tied aid to the OECD and DAC, removal of obstacles to untying on the donor side, and initiatives to encourage competition for aid-supported contracts on the recipient side. As

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8268-742: The Declaration of St James's Palace of 1941, when Europe's resistance gathered in London. This was expanded on by the 1941 Atlantic Charter , establishing the Allies and their common goals, inciting a new wave of global international institutions like the United Nations ( founded 1945 ) or the Bretton Woods System (1944). In 1943 at the Moscow Conference and Tehran Conference , plans to establish joint institutions for

8427-512: The European Union Recovery Instrument . Agreed in principle by the European Council on 21 July 2020 and adopted on 14 December 2020, the instrument is worth € 750 billion . NGEU will operate from 2021 to 2026, and will be tied to the regular 2021–2027 budget of the EU's Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). The comprehensive NGEU and MFF packages are projected to reach €1824.3 billion. Preparing

8586-717: The French Development Agency , Agence Française de Développement (AFD). Enactment in the United States in 1961 of the Foreign Assistance Act as the basic economic assistance legislation, established the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Later the rest of the member states followed, either establishing an aid agency under the command of its Foreign ministry or as a separate entity. The work of

8745-634: The French Union was installed by the new Fourth French Republic to direct the decolonization of its colonies so that they would become parts of a European community. By 1947 a growing rift between the western Allied Powers and the Soviet Union became evident as a result of the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election , which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement . March of that year saw two important developments. First

8904-512: The Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis found that between 2000 and 2010 $ 1.15 billion in private aid grants over $ 1 million from the United States targeted gender equality. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development provides detailed analysis of the extent of aid for gender equality. OECD member countries tag their aid programs with gender markers when a program

9063-571: The Locarno Treaties —delivered a widely recognized speech at the League of Nations in Geneva on 5 September 1929 for a federal Europe to secure Europe and settle the historic Franco-German enmity . With large-scale war being waged in Europe once again in the 1930s and becoming World War II , the question of what to fight against and what for, had to be agreed on. A first agreement was

9222-448: The Treaty of Brussels was signed, establishing the Western Union (WU), followed by the International Authority for the Ruhr . Furthermore, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), the predecessor of the OECD, was also founded in 1948 to manage the Marshall Plan , which led to the Soviets creating Comecon in response. The ensuing Hague Congress of May 1948 was a pivotal moment in European integration, as it led to

9381-478: The Treaty of Paris . This treaty was created in 1952 the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was built on the International Authority for the Ruhr , installed by the Western Allies in 1949 to regulate the coal and steel industries of the Ruhr area in West Germany. Backed by the Marshall Plan with large funds coming from the United States since 1948, the ECSC became a milestone organisation, enabling European economic development and integration and being

9540-426: The United Kingdom . Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum . The Ostpolitik and the ensuing détente led to establishment of a first truly pan-European body, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), predecessor of the modern Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In 1979, the first direct elections to

9699-510: The United Nations Development Program introduced the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure . The Gender Empowerment Measure is calculated based on three measures, proportion of women in national parliaments, percentage of women in economic decision making positions and female share of income. The Gender Development Index uses the Human Development Index and corrects its results in life expectancy, income, and education for gender imbalances. Due to criticisms of these two indexes

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9858-440: The Western Union , the International Authority for the Ruhr , the European Coal and Steel Community , the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community , which were established by treaties. These increasingly amalgamated bodies grew, with their legal successor the EU, both in size through the accessions of a further 22 states from 1973 to 2013, and in power through acquisitions of policy areas. In 2012,

10017-440: The extreme nationalism that had caused the war. On 19 September 1946, in a much recognized speech, Winston Churchill , speaking at the University of Zürich , reiterated his calls since 1930 for a "European Union" and "Council of Europe", coincidentally parallel to the Hertenstein Congress of the Union of European Federalists , one of the then founded and later constituting members of the European Movement . One month later,

10176-457: The monetary branch of the European Union, the prime component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks. It is one of the world's most important central banks . The ECB Governing Council makes monetary policy for the Eurozone and the European Union, administers the foreign exchange reserves of EU member states, engages in foreign exchange operations, and defines the intermediate monetary objectives and key interest rate of

10335-447: The principle of conferral (which says that it should act only within the limits of the competences conferred on it by the treaties ) and of subsidiarity (which says that it should act only where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states acting alone). Laws made by the EU institutions are passed in a variety of forms. Generally speaking, they can be classified into two groups: those which come into force without

10494-480: The 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power. Nevertheless, in 1965 an agreement was reached, and on 1 July 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities . Jean Rey presided over the first merged commission ( Rey Commission ). In 1973, the communities were enlarged to include Denmark (including Greenland), Ireland, and

10653-414: The Bank's normal lending. The aid agencies of the large donor states were also set up at this time. Canada created an "External Aid Office" in 1960, which in 1968 became the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). France was the first country to establish a Ministry for Co-operation to be responsible for assistance to independent, mainly African, developing countries in 1961, the predecessor to

10812-415: The CJEU the power for consistent application of EU law across the EU as a whole. The court also acts as an administrative and constitutional court between the other EU institutions and the Member States and can annul or invalidate unlawful acts of EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies. The General Court is a constituent court of the European Union. It hears actions taken against the institutions of

10971-417: The Council of the European Union and the "Council of Ministers", its former title), forms one half of the EU's legislature. It consists of a representative from each member state's government and meets in different compositions depending on the policy area being addressed . Notwithstanding its different configurations, it is considered to be one single body. In addition to the legislative functions, members of

11130-475: The DAC as their measure of aid. This is in spite of the fact that it is not an entirely comprehensive measure. It includes only aid from government sources; aid from private sources, including NGOs, is not counted. About ten to fifteen percent of aid comes from private sources. ODA includes developmental and humanitarian aid, the latter being much the smaller of the two. It does not include aid for military use. It includes both outright grants and loans , as long as

11289-419: The DAG, addressed at its second (July 1960) and third (October 1960) meetings, was to achieve accurate and comparable data reporting by its members on their aid flows to developing countries. In March 1961, the OEEC published the first comprehensive survey of The Flow of Financial Resources to Countries in Course of Economic Development, 1956-59 . This was followed by annual reports until 1964. On 23 July 1961

11448-830: The Development Assistance Directorate (DAD) in 1969 and then the Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) in 1975. Along with the institution of the DAG/DAC, several developments in the early 1960s completed the institutional framework for aid that is still largely in place. In 1960, the World Bank opened a subsidiary, the International Development Association (IDA) to provide loans to developing countries on easier terms than

11607-560: The ECB and the national central banks (NCBs) of all 27 member states of the European Union. The ESCB is not the monetary authority of the eurozone, because not all EU member states have joined the euro. The ESCB's objective is price stability throughout the European Union. Secondarily, the ESCB's goal is to improve monetary and financial cooperation between the Eurosystem and member states outside

11766-401: The EU administration by investigating complaints, as well as by proactively looking into broader systemic issues. The current Ombudsman is Emily O'Reilly . The European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) is the prosecutory branch of the union with juridical personality, established under the Treaty of Lisbon between 23 of the 27 states of the EU following the method of enhanced cooperation. It

11925-542: The EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . The United Kingdom became the only member state to leave the EU , in 2020; ten countries are aspiring or negotiating to join it . Internationalism and visions of European unity had existed since well before the 19th century, but gained particularly as a reaction to World War I and its aftermath. In this light the first advances for the idea of European integration were made. In 1920 John Maynard Keynes proposed

12084-420: The EU, which together with the Council of the European Union is tasked with amending and approving the European Commission's proposals. 705 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are directly elected by EU citizens every five years on the basis of proportional representation . MEPs are elected on a national basis and they sit according to political groups rather than their nationality. Each country has

12243-558: The EU. The ECB Executive Board enforces the policies and decisions of the Governing Council, and may direct the national central banks when doing so. The ECB has the exclusive right to authorise the issuance of euro banknotes . Member states can issue euro coins , but the volume must be approved by the ECB beforehand. The bank also operates the TARGET2 payments system. The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) consists of

12402-638: The Euro . After the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic , the EU leaders agreed for the first time to create common debt to finance the European Recovery Program called Next Generation EU (NGEU). On 24 February 2022, after massing on the borders of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces undertook an attempt for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The European Union imposed heavy sanctions on Russia and agreed on

12561-469: The European Community and the EU, and then made amendments to those founding treaties. These are power-giving treaties which set broad policy goals and establish institutions with the necessary legal powers to implement those goals. These legal powers include the ability to enact legislation which can directly affect all member states and their inhabitants. The EU has legal personality , with

12720-523: The European Council of its decision to leave on 29 March 2017, initiating the formal withdrawal procedure for leaving the EU ; following extensions to the process, the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020, though most areas of EU law continued to apply to the UK for a transition period which lasted until 31 December 2020. The early 2020s saw Denmark abolishing one of its three opt-outs and Croatia adopting

12879-490: The European Council. The other 25 commissioners are subsequently appointed by the Council of the European Union in agreement with the nominated president. The 27 commissioners as a single body are subject to approval (or otherwise) by a vote of the European Parliament . All commissioners are first nominated by the government of the respective member state. The council, as it is now simply called (also called

13038-618: The European Parliament were held. Greece joined in 1981. In 1985, Greenland left the Communities , following a dispute over fishing rights. During the same year, the Schengen Agreement paved the way for the creation of open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-member states. In 1986, the Single European Act was signed. Portugal and Spain joined in 1986. In 1990, after

13197-500: The European Treaties but were developed by the Court of Justice itself over the 1960s, apparently under the influence of its then most influential judge, Frenchman Robert Lecourt . The question whether the secondary law enacted by the EU has a comparable status in relation to national legislation, has been a matter of debate among legal scholars. The European Union is based on a series of treaties . These first established

13356-527: The European Union by individuals and member states, although certain matters are reserved for the Court of Justice. Decisions of the General Court can be appealed to the Court of Justice, but only on a point of law. Prior to the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009, it was known as the Court of First Instance. The European Central Bank (ECB) is one of the institutions of

13515-410: The European Union ). It is more integrated than a traditional confederation of states because the general level of government widely employs qualified majority voting in some decision-making among the member states, rather than relying exclusively on unanimity. It is less integrated than a federal state because it is not a state in its own right: sovereignty continues to flow 'from the bottom up', from

13674-481: The European Union is formally called the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and consists of two courts: the Court of Justice and the General Court . The Court of Justice is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law . As a part of the CJEU, it is tasked with interpreting EU law and ensuring its uniform application across all EU member states under Article 263 of

13833-554: The European Union). The monetary policy of the eurozone is determined by the European Central Bank. The interpretation and the application of EU law and the treaties are ensured by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The EU budget is scrutinised by the European Court of Auditors. There are also a number of ancillary bodies which advise the EU or operate in a specific area. The Union's executive branch

13992-788: The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Busan, Korea in 2011, participants endorsed the "Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation," which expanded on the Paris Declaration and established the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation. In April 2014, the Global Partnership -- for which the OECD and UNDP assure a joint support team -- held its first High Level Meeting in Mexico City. UNCTAD has noted that, since

14151-595: The G8, or the EU, or that have a firm accession date for EU membership. Movement of countries on or off the list has caused the DAC to retroactively change past ODA figures for some group categories. Besides ODA, the DAC keeps statistics on three other major categories: European Union in Europe  (dark grey) The European Union ( EU ) is a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe. The Union has

14310-528: The Least Developed Countries and to promote buying goods and services locally in these countries, rather than in donor countries. This agreement was extended in 2008 to 39 highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs). As a consequence, in 2008 80% of total ODA (minus administrative costs) was provided untied, 4% tied and of 16% the tying status was not reported. A 2009 independent evaluation of DAC members' policies and practices towards untying by

14469-734: The Netherlands , and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome , which created the European Economic Community (EEC) and established a customs union . They also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for cooperation in developing nuclear power. Both treaties came into force in 1958. Although the EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC, they shared

14628-596: The Netherlands, NGOs including Oxfam Netherlands Organization for Development Assistance, the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries, Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, and Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid have included certain targets for their aid programs with regards to gender equality. NGOs which receive aid dollars through the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs or which partner with

14787-562: The Norwegian government on aid projects must "demonstrate that they take women and gender equality seriously". In response to this requirement organizations like the Norwegian Christian charity Digni have initiated projects which target gender equality. Private foundations provide the majority of their gender related aid to health programs and have relatively neglected other areas of gender inequality. Foundations, such as

14946-421: The OECD using standard definitions, categories and systems. Notable examples are China and India. For 2018, the OECD estimated that, while total ODA was about $ 150 billion, an additional six to seven billion dollars of ODA-like development aid was given by ten other states. (These amounts include aid that is humanitarian in character as well as purely developmental aid.) Recognizing that ODA does not capture all

15105-475: The OECD, about 80% is official and 20% private. Development aid is not usually understood as including remittances received from migrants working or living in diaspora —even though these form a significant amount of international transfer—as the recipients of remittances are usually individuals and families rather than formal projects and programmes. World Bank estimates for remittance flows to "developing countries" in 2016 totalled $ 422 billion, which

15264-512: The Paris Declaration commitments was reviewed at the third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in September 2008 in Accra Ghana, an event co-ordinated by the DAC's Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, the government of Ghana and the World Bank. The International Health Partnership (IHP+) was created in 2007 in order to put the Paris and Accra principles on aid effectiveness into practice. At

15423-837: The Soviets. Immediately following the February 1948 coup d'état by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in the Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the Cold War . The year 1948 marked the beginning of the institutionalised modern European integration . In March 1948

15582-541: The Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The Court was established in 1952, and is based in Luxembourg . It is composed of one judge per member state – currently 27 – although it normally hears cases in panels of three, five or fifteen judges. The Court has been led by president Koen Lenaerts since 2015. The CJEU is the highest court of the European Union in matters of Union law . Its case-law provides that EU law has supremacy over any national law that

15741-430: The Union as a whole, though the exact delimitation has on occasions become a subject of scholarly or legal disputes. In certain fields, members have awarded exclusive competence and exclusive mandate to the Union. These are areas in which member states have entirely renounced their own capacity to enact legislation. In other areas, the EU and its member states share the competence to legislate. While both can legislate,

15900-554: The Union for a new great enlargement is a political priority for the Union, with the goal of achieving over 35 member states by 2030. Institutional and budgetary reforms are being discussed in order to the Union to be ready for the new members. In May 2024, concerns rise, that the outcome of the elections in June, can undermine some of the crucial policies of the EU in the domain of environment, diplomacy, economy . The war in Ukraine by creating inflation, lowering life level created

16059-1078: The United Arab Emirates. The Observers are: World Bank, the IMF, UNDP, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Known at first as the Development Assistance Group (DAG), the committee was set up on 13 January 1960 under the auspices of the OECD's forerunner, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). Its first meeting took place in Washington, D.C. (U.S.A.) on 9–11 March 1960, chaired by ambassador Ortona, Italy. A primary concern of

16218-865: The United Nations Development Program in its 2010 Human Development Report introduced the Gender Inequality Index . The Gender Inequality Index uses more metrics and attempts to show the losses from gender inequality. Even with these indexes, Ranjula Swain of the Stockholm School of Economics and Supriya Garikipati of the University of Liverpool found that, compared to the effectiveness of health, economic, and education targeted aid, foreign aid for gender equality remains understudied. Swain and Garikipati found in an analysis of Gender Equality Aid that on

16377-675: The WEU and NATO in 1955, prompting the Soviet Union to form the Warsaw Pact in 1955 as an institutional framework for its military domination in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe . Assessing the progress of European integration the Messina Conference was held in 1955, ordering the Spaak report , which in 1956 recommended the next significant steps of European integration. In 1957, Belgium , France , Italy , Luxembourg ,

16536-534: The Western industrialised countries but some poorer countries also contribute aid. Development aid is not usually understood as including remittances received from migrants working or living in diaspora —even though these form a significant amount of international transfer—as the recipients of remittances are usually individuals and families rather than formal projects and programmes. Negative side effects of development aid can include an unbalanced appreciation of

16695-494: The aimed goal of increasing aid effectiveness and efficiency, phasing out bilateral aid, transferring good practices, and capacity building. Analyses of development aid often focus on ODA, as ODA is measured systematically and appears to cover most of what people regard as development aid. However, there are some significant categories of development aid that fall outside ODA, notably: private aid, remittances, aid to less-poor countries and aid from other donor states. A distinction

16854-544: The approach to gender in development aid through the 1980s. Starting in the early 1990s Gender and Development's influence encouraged gender mainstreaming within international development aid. The World Conference on Women, 1995 promulgated gender mainstreaming on all policy levels for the United Nations . Gender Mainstreaming has been adopted by nearly all units of the UN with the UN Economic and Social Council adopting

17013-527: The beginning of the 2010s, the cohesion of the European Union has been tested by several issues, including a debt crisis in some of the Eurozone countries , a surge in asylum seekers in 2015 , and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU . A referendum in the UK on its membership of the European Union was held in 2016, with 51.9 per cent of participants voting to leave. The UK formally notified

17172-577: The big push to break the low-income poverty trap poorer countries are trapped in. From this perspective, aid serves to finance "the core inputs to development – teachers, health centers, roads, wells, medicine, to name a few". (United Nations 2004). And a view that is skeptic about the impacts of aid, supported by William Easterly, that points out that aid has not proven to work after 40 years of large investments in Africa. According to James Ferguson , these issues might be caused by deficient diagnostics of

17331-456: The committee adopted the concept of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 1969. The DAC revised the definition in 1972, which has remained unchanged since then, except for changes in the list of recipients for which it can be counted. At the DAC High Level Meeting in May 2000, members agreed to untie their aid (with the exception of technical cooperation and food aid) from January 2001 onwards to

17490-461: The committee concentrates on To this end, the committee holds regular High Level Meetings and Senior Level Meetings where the ministers or heads of the national aid agencies and other development partners meet to discuss issues related to development and adopt recommendations and resolutions. The member states are expected to have certain common objectives concerning the conduct of their aid programmes. The committee therefore issues guidelines on

17649-416: The council also have executive responsibilities, such as the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy and the coordination of broad economic policies within the Union. The Presidency of the council rotates between member states, with each holding it for six months. Beginning on 1 July 2024, the position is held by Hungary. The European Parliament is one of three legislative institutions of

17808-402: The countries' development goals. The subsidiary bodies of DAC are: Since March 2023, its Chair is Mr. Carsten Staur , former Danish Ambassador to the OECD and UNESCO. As already noted, the DAC is a forum for the coordination of aid efforts. One of the principal questions that has emerged over the years was how to ensure that its member states contributed equal shares of development aid . In

17967-574: The creation of the European Movement International , the College of Europe and most importantly to the foundation of the Council of Europe on 5 May 1949 (which is now Europe Day ). The Council of Europe was one of the first institutions to bring the sovereign states of (then only Western) Europe together, raising great hopes and fevered debates in the following two years for further European integration. It has since been

18126-556: The development agencies. In his book The Anti-Politics Machine , Ferguson uses the example of the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho to illustrate how a bad diagnostic on the economic activity of the population and the desire to stay away from local politics, caused a livestock project to fail. According to Martijn Nitzsche, another problem is the way on how development projects are sometimes constructed and how they are maintained by

18285-662: The donor country to an international organisation such as the World Bank or the United Nations Agencies ( UNDP , UNICEF , UNAIDS , etc.) which then distributes it among the developing countries. The proportion is currently about 70% bilateral 30% multilateral. About 80% of the aid measured by the OECD comes from government sources as official development assistance (ODA). The remaining 20% or so comes from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations or NGOs (e.g.,  Oxfam ). Most development aid comes from

18444-465: The donor country to pooled funds administered by an international organisation such as the World Bank or a UN Agency ( UNDP , UNICEF , UNAIDS , etc.) which then uses its funds for work in developing countries. To qualify as multilateral, the funding must lose its identity as originating from a particular source. The proportion of multilateral aid in ODA was 28% in 2019. Trilateral development cooperation (also called triangular development cooperation)

18603-554: The early 1960s, some member states contributed a significantly larger share of their GNP than others. To encourage that the aid effort was equally divided, the DAC quickly recognized the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development recommendation on having an International Aid Target , proposed in 1964. The issue of the aid burden-sharing eventually led to the first report on "Total Official Contributions as Per Cent of National Income" in 1967, something that

18762-811: The effects of gangs on women in Latin America. USAID first established a women in development office in 1974 and in 1996 promulgated its Gender Plan of Action to further integrate gender equality into aid programs. In 2012 USAID released a Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy to guide its aid programs in making gender equality a central goal. USAID saw increased solicitations from aid programs which integrated gender equality from 1995 to 2010. As part of their increased aid provision, USAID developed PROMOTE to target gender inequality in Afghanistan with $ 216 million in aid coming directly from USAID and $ 200 million coming from other donors. Many NGOs have also incorporated gender equality into their programs. Within

18921-456: The entire cabinet, the final say in accepting or rejecting a candidate submitted for a given portfolio by a member state, and oversees the commission's permanent civil service. After the President, the most prominent commissioner is the high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy, who is ex-officio a vice-president of the European Commission and is also chosen by

19080-402: The euro, followed by Cyprus and Malta in 2008, Slovakia in 2009, Estonia in 2011, Latvia in 2014, and Lithuania in 2015. On 1 December 2009, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force and reformed many aspects of the EU. In particular, it changed the legal structure of the European Union, merging the EU three pillars system into a single legal entity provisioned with a legal personality , created

19239-481: The eurozone. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) is the auditory branch of the European Union. It was established in 1975 in Luxembourg in order to improve EU financial management. It has 27 members (1 from each EU member-state) supported by approximately 800 civil servants. The European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) is the EU's civil service recruitment body and operates its selection of candidates via generalist and specialist competitions. Each institution

19398-648: The expenditures that promote development, the OECD in 2014 started establishing a wider statistical framework called TOSSD (Total Official Support for Sustainable Development) that would count spending on "international public goods". In March 2022, TOSSD was adopted as a data source for indicator 17.3.1 of the SDGs global indicator framework to measure development support. The TOSSD data for 2020 shows more than USD 355 billion disbursed to support for sustainable development, from almost 100 provider countries and institutions. The Commitment to Development Index published annually by

19557-561: The fall of Communism in Europe in the early 1990s, the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union, which had formerly been donors of aid, became aid recipients, albeit wealthier ones than most developing countries. Because of this and because some formerly poor East Asian countries were now middle-income, the DAC in 1993 divided the list of recipients into two parts, on the basis of national income. Only aid to countries in

19716-554: The fall of the Eastern Bloc , the former East Germany became part of the communities as part of a reunified Germany . The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty —whose main architects were Horst Köhler , Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand —came into force on 1 November 1993. The treaty also gave the name European Community to the EEC, even if it was referred to as such before

19875-483: The flow of long-term funds and other development assistance to them. The origins of the so-called "DAC Secretariat" or DCD are as follows. A Development Department (DD), under the direction of Assistant Secretary-General Luciano Giretti of Italy was established within the OECD Secretariat in 1961. It consisted of two branches, a Technical Co-operation Branch and a Development Financial Branch. The latter became

20034-778: The institutions of the developing European community under the European Political Community , which was to include the also proposed European Defence Community , an alternative to West Germany joining NATO which was established in 1949 under the Truman Doctrine . In 1954 the Modified Brussels Treaty transformed the Western Union into the Western European Union (WEU). West Germany eventually joined both

20193-481: The interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. The leader of the 27 is the president of the European Commission (presently Ursula von der Leyen for 2019–2024, reelected for the 2024-2029 term), proposed by the European Council , following and taking into account the result of the European elections, and is then elected by the European Parliament. The President retains, as the leader responsible for

20352-468: The internal market; enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade , agriculture , fisheries and regional development . Passport controls have been abolished for travel within the Schengen Area . The eurozone is a group composed of the 20 EU member states that have fully implemented the economic and monetary union and use the euro currency . Through

20511-402: The legal inception of the European Union (EU)—the principal framework for this unification. The EU inherited many of its present responsibilities from the European Communities (EC), which were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration . The European Union operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making, and according to

20670-460: The loans are on significantly easier terms than the commercial norm: the DAC calls these "concessional" loans. The change to the definition of ODA in 1972 involved tightening the definition of "concessionality". The DAC defines concessionality according to a mathematically computed "grant element"; loans with a grant element of at least 25 percent are considered concessional and count as ODA. This criterion has not been changed since 1972. Loans made in

20829-399: The local population. Often, projects are made with technology that is hard to understand and too difficult to repair, resulting in unavoidable failure over time. Also, in some cases the local population is not very interested in seeing the project to succeed and may revert to disassembling it to retain valuable source materials. Finally, villagers do not always maintain a project as they believe

20988-422: The longstanding UN target for an ODA/GNI ratio of 0.7% in 2020: European Union countries that are members of the Development Assistance Committee gave 0.42% of GNI (excluding the US$ 19.4 billion given by EU Institutions). Research has shown that development aid has a strong and favorable effect on economic growth and development through promoting investments in infrastructure and human capital. According to

21147-501: The lower income part (Part I) counted as ODA. Aid to countries in the upper income part was put into a new category called Official Assistance (OA), separate from ODA. This bifurcated list was abolished in 2005, however, because of the confusion and accounting difficulties that were occasioned when countries moved from one part to the other of the list. The current list (2007) includes all countries with per capita GNI less than $ 11 455, except that it excludes countries that are members of

21306-402: The management of development aid. It also publishes a wide range of reports, among them the annual Development Co-operation Report. In addition, as member states recognise the need for greater coherence in policies across sectors that affect developing countries, an OECD-wide initiative on Policy Coherence for Development explores ways to ensure that government policies are mutually supportive of

21465-486: The member states can only legislate to the extent to which the EU has not. In other policy areas, the EU can only co-ordinate, support and supplement member state action but cannot enact legislation with the aim of harmonising national laws. That a particular policy area falls into a certain category of competence is not necessarily indicative of what legislative procedure is used for enacting legislation within that policy area. Different legislative procedures are used within

21624-443: The member states. Since then, the eurozone has increased to encompass 20 countries. The euro currency became the second-largest reserve currency in the world. In 2004, the EU saw its biggest enlargement to date when Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia , Hungary , Latvia , Lithuania , Malta , Poland , Slovakia , and Slovenia joined the union. In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU members. Later that year, Slovenia adopted

21783-420: The necessity for national implementation measures (regulations) and those which specifically require national implementation measures (directives). EU policy is in general promulgated by EU directives , which are then implemented in the domestic legislation of its member states , and EU regulations , which are immediately enforceable in all member states. Lobbying at the EU level by special interest groups

21942-468: The notion of foreign aid , although the international community does not usually regard military aid as development aid. Development aid is widely seen as a major way to meet Sustainable Development Goal 1 (to end poverty in all its forms everywhere) for the developing nations. The OECD also lists countries by the amount of ODA they give as a percentage of their gross national income . The top 10 DAC countries in 2020 were as follows. Six countries met

22101-420: The origin of the main institutions of the EU such as the European Commission and Parliament . Founding fathers of the European Union understood that coal and steel were the two industries essential for waging war, and believed that by tying their national industries together, a future war between their nations became much less likely. In parallel with Schuman, the Pleven Plan of 1951 tried but failed to tie

22260-423: The original development workers or others in the surroundings will repair it when it fails (which is not always so). A common criticism in recent years is that rich countries have put so many conditions on aid that it has reduced aid effectiveness. In the example of tied aid , donor countries often require the recipient to purchase goods and services from the donor, even if these are cheaper elsewhere. According to

22419-472: The position and role of women. Since then the EU has continued the policy of including gender equality within development aid and programs. Within the EU gender equality is increasingly introduced in programmatic ways. The bulk of the EU's aid for gender equality seeks to increase women's access to education, employment and reproductive health services. However, some areas of gender inequality are targeted according to region, such as land reform and counteracting

22578-453: The provision of development aid. Some academics criticized the WID approach for relying on integrating women into existing development aid paradigms instead of promulgating specific aid to encourage gender equality. The gender and development approach was created in response, to discuss international development in terms of societal gender roles and to challenge these gender roles within development policy. Women in Development predominated as

22737-399: The recipient's currency, increasing corruption, and adverse political effects such as postponements of necessary economic and democratic reforms. There are various terms that used interchangeably with development aid in some contexts but possess different meanings in others. Official aid may be bilateral : given from one country directly to another; or it may be multilateral : given by

22896-426: The report found positive programmatic effects, but the report did not look at whether these results were from increased access to services or increasing gender equality. Even when gender equality is identified as a goal of aid, other factors will often be the primary focus of the aid. In some instances the nature of aid's gender equality component can fail to be implemented at the level of individual projects when it

23055-612: The rich countries "aren't developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones." Aid effectiveness is the degree of success or failure of international aid (development aid or humanitarian aid ). Concern with aid effectiveness might be at a high level of generality (whether aid on average fulfils the main functions that aid is supposed to have), or it might be more detailed (considering relative degrees of success between different types of aid in differing circumstances). Questions of aid effectiveness have been highly contested by academics, commentators and practitioners: there

23214-401: The right to sign agreements and international treaties. Development aid Development aid (or development cooperation ) is a type of aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development of developing countries . It is distinguished from humanitarian aid by aiming at a sustained improvement in the conditions in

23373-408: The same category of competence, and even with the same policy area. The distribution of competences in various policy areas between member states and the union is divided into the following three categories: The European Union has seven principal decision-making bodies, its institutions : the European Parliament , the European Council , the Council of the European Union , the European Commission ,

23532-429: The same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein ( Hallstein Commission ) and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand ( Armand Commission ) and then Étienne Hirsch ( Hirsch Commission ). The OEEC was in turn reformed in 1961 into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its membership was extended to states outside of Europe, the United States and Canada. During

23691-449: The several peoples of the separate member states, rather than from a single undifferentiated whole. This is reflected in the fact that the member states remain the 'masters of the Treaties', retaining control over the allocation of competences to the union through constitutional change (thus retaining so-called Kompetenz-kompetenz ); in that they retain control of the use of armed force; they retain control of taxation; and in that they retain

23850-435: The speed with which countries develop. Dissident economists such as Peter Bauer and Milton Friedman argued in the 1960s that aid is ineffective: "an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." In economics, there are two competing positions on aid. A view pro aid, supported by Jeffrey Sachs and the United Nations, which argues that foreign aid will give

24009-447: The treaty. With further enlargement planned to include the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Cyprus and Malta , the Copenhagen criteria for candidate members to join the EU were agreed upon in June 1993. The expansion of the EU introduced a new level of complexity and discord. In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU. In 2002, euro banknotes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 of

24168-478: The turn of the century, DAC has become one of the dominant institutions with regards to development aid. The Center for Global Development , a non-profit think-tank in Washington DC, created the Commitment to Development Index which ranks and evaluates the achievements of DAC countries to the developing world. It measures the "development-friendliness" of the donor nations, moving beyond standard comparisons of Official Development Assistance . The Index quantifies

24327-487: The union for foreign affairs and security policy (presently Josep Borrell ) also takes part in its meetings. Described by some as the union's "supreme political leadership", it is actively involved in the negotiation of treaty changes and defines the EU's policy agenda and strategies. Its leadership role involves solving disputes between member states and the institutions, and to resolving any political crises or disagreements over controversial issues and policies. It acts as

24486-422: Was accompanied by closely negotiated explanations. Another early question was what a donor could include when it reported its aid efforts to the committee. It was necessary to make the distinction between official transactions that were made with the main objective of promoting the economic and social development of developing countries, as opposed to other official flows (OOF) like military assistance. To that end,

24645-420: Was established, along with its citizenship , when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993, and was incorporated as an international legal juridical person upon entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 . Its beginnings can be traced to the Inner Six states (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany ) at the start of modern European integration in 1948, and to

24804-400: Was far greater than total ODA. The exact nature and effects of remittance money remain contested. The International Monetary Fund has reported that private remittances may have a negative impact on economic growth, as they are often used for private consumption of individuals and families, not for economic development of the region or country. ODA only includes aid to countries which are on

24963-441: Was meant to promote. Programs can also fail to provide lasting effects, with local organizations removing gender equality aspects of programs after international aid dollars are no longer funding them. Robert C. Jones of McGill University and Liam Swiss of Memorial University argue that women leaders of governmental aid organizations and NGOs are more effective at Gender Mainstreaming than their male counterparts. They found in

25122-418: Was spent on transport , building and the environment, €16bn on education and research , €13bn on welfare, €20bn on foreign and defence policy, €2bn in finance , €2bn in energy , €1.5bn in communications, and €13bn in administration. In November 2020, two members of the union, Hungary and Poland, blocked approval to the EU's budget at a meeting in the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper), citing

25281-414: Was the signing of the Treaty of Dunkirk between France and the United Kingdom . The treaty assured mutual assistance in the event of future military aggression against either nation. Though it officially named Germany as a threat, in reality the actual concern was for the Soviet Union. A few days later came the announcement of the Truman Doctrine which pledged American support for democracies to counter

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