The evolving logics of EU development assistance in an era of policycris and retroliberalism

This paper discusses trends in EU development policy against evolving discourses and practices in international development. It shows that, after the ‘golden age’ of the first decade of the new century when it placed the promotion of human development at the centre of its external assistance programme and led international efforts on aid effectiveness, the EU has started openly prioritising its material interests, particularly with regards to, first, curbing irregular migration flows and, second, supporting investment of European firms abroad. An important component of this paradigmatic shift, it is maintained here, has been the use of blended finance, leading to a sort of ‘financialisation of EU development policy’, and the new rhetoric of ‘partnerships of equals’ gradually replaced by ‘mutually beneficial partnerships’ to counter the approach of China as emerging major development actor, in this case resulting in the ‘southernisation of EU development policy’ – all this ultimately undermining many aid effectiveness principles. In this regard, another issue to consider is the launch of ‘Team Europe’, which following its initial implementation with Covid-19 was championed as a game changer by the European Commission as a strategic tool to reduce fragmentation and increase impact of the EU’s external assistance programme, also in response to the Wieser Group which in late 2019 had made a forceful call for a radical reform of the European financial architecture for development. This paper, most importantly, argues that EU development policy since the early 2010s is aligned with retroliberalism, a variant of neoliberalism still emphasising the primacy of the market and adherence to economic growth as the key metric of development, but with a strong role for the state as foreseen by previous development approaches such as modernisation and neo-structuralism, and with specific expectations about the role of foreign aid, notably in relation to objectives (economic growth), rationales (mutual interests), and modalities (leveraged investment).