Research On The Policy Evolution And Effectiveness Of EU Official Development Assistance

Since the50s of the last century, Europe Union has been committed to expand its position in the world economy and political arena by its official development assistance (ODA) policy. Currently, according to the EU’s own statistics, the European Union and its Member States has become the largest provider of ODA, which accounted for more than half of the world’s total ODA①. Its ODA policy has gone through a generation, development and innovation process, so what kind of its policy evolution? How its ODA effectiveness? As for the recipient countries, its aid effect is reflected in what areas?On one hand, this paper attempts to do an overall analysis on the EU ODA policy development, aiming to clarify its evolution, status and reveal its core attempt of its official aid policy. We conclude that, after the end of the Cold War, the EU expanded the breadth of its aid, focusing its assistance on democracy, institutional and environmental protection and other areas to conform to the development of the international situation and their own political goals. Meanwhile the political conditionality and ideological intensity of its aid is significantly obvious. Its aid amount mainly depends on the "performance" of recipients. Accordingly, its assistance form is not confined to the economic aid, but also humanitarian assistance, military assistance and so on. So we can get a glimpse conclusion that EU ODA not only aims to strengthen cooperation with developing countries but also seeks to maximize satisfy with their own interests, especially the needs of political interests and finally strengthen the EU to be an international community of foreign influence.On the other hand, this paper also will carry a deep study to explore its effectiveness from two perspectives:donor and recipient countries. As to the donor, the author will use the aid diamonds models; as to the recipient, we will use results-oriented analysis. All these are aiming to make the analysis comprehensive and accurate. From the donor perspective, we use the following four indicators:ODA/GNI, grant index, proportion of bilateral ODA and untied aid ratio to comprehensively reflect the quality and trends of aid. EU’s aid quality in2011has the deterioration trend comparing2010with DAC countries; From the recipient perspective, the effectiveness of EU ODA has some limitation and lack of thoroughness. Therefore, EU’s ODA indeed has some effect for recipients, while there is still great room for improvement.Lastly we will list out the problems and corresponding suggestions of EU in implementing its ODA. Finally this paper mainly aims to rich the theoretical study, improves transparency and provides a reference for our country’s ODA.