School of something FACULTY OF OTHER School of Politics and International Studies Premature donors? The new EU member states and development assistance Balázs Szent-Iványi, Marie Curie Fellow DSA Annual Conference, 3 November 2012, London

We do not like the term emerging donors. China and other emerging donors are doing a lot of harm, and we do not want to be grouped with them. If you need labels, call us new EU/OECD donors (senior MFA diplomat from a Central and Eastern European country) So, what are these new EU/OECD donors like? Are they really closer to EU/OECD donors than to the emerging donors? Structure of the presentation: Origins of new CEE development policies Too soon? Aid quantity, allocation and quality Conclusions New EU/OECD donors?

The Central and Eastern countries all had international cooperation policies during the Communist period These were more or less suspended after 1989, and the CEE countries turned from being donors to recipients No systematic development policies during the 1990s The creation of bilateral development policies and the necessary institutions was a requirement during the EU negotiations Technical assistance from the UNDP and CIDA New development policies launched between 2001 and 2003 Origins of CEE international development policies

Are they economically ready to be donors? As they classify as high income countries, the answer must be yes. Socially? Self perception of societies is that they themselves are poor, and awareness of development issues is low... the answer is most likely no. Politically? It seems that the politics is slow to graps the uses of aid. Politicians see aid difficult to justify to the public. Dont have any illusions. If the EU didnt require us to do development policy, we wouldnt be doing it. The returns are just too small (senior Hungarian MFA official) premature donors? All these dilemmas are well illustrated by the quantity, quality and allocation of CEE bilateral aid But… have they become donors too soon?

Aid quantity Czech Republic Hungary Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia OECD DAC average Rising powers? Total ODA from the EU-10 is only around $1 billion per year… The EU target for 2010 of 0.17% was not met by any country. The 2015 target of 0.33% seems extremely unlikely.

Allocation Primacy of the neighborhood: West Balkans and the former Soviet states Countries in Africa or LDCs are only marginal recipients Those non-neighborhood countries that do receive aid are often inherited partners from the pre-1989 development policies (some path dependency therefore still exists) Quality In short: the CEE countries are very far from meeting the aid quality requirements of Paris/Accra/Busan or the EU (soft) acquis Main shortcomings: bilateral aid is highly tied, no program-based aid, single year commitments, no country strategy papers, not involved in joint programming, policy coherence not an issue at all, no usage of country systems, organizational inefficiencies But, many argue that meeting such requirements is too costly with so low levels of aid Aid allocation and quality

A new face of donorship or just the beginning of the road? If we do consider them new EU/OECD donors, they have most in common with donors like Italy, Greece or Portugal Is international socialization by the EU, OECD, UNDP and others working? Do the CEE countries have anything special to contribute to the global aid system? Transition experience – but, is it relevant for developing countries, and is it transferable? Regional expertise? Conclusions

School of something FACULTY OF OTHER Thanks for your attention.