Europe remains the world's biggest development donor – €74.4 billion in 2018

The European Union and its Member States continued to be the world's leading provider of official development assistance in 2018 and stepped up their efforts directed at developing countries.

This was confirmed by the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) in their latest report on preliminary figures for 2018. Collective assistance from the European Union and its Member States amounted to more than €74.4 billion in 2018. European development assistance represents almost 57% of the total global development assistance by all OECD-DAC donors.

Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica, said: "EU development cooperation helps improve life opportunities for millions of people across the world. The EU and its Member States have invested over €74 billion in development in 2018 - over half the world's development efforts. In the future, the EU and its Member States should not only maintain our leading position, but also keep up efforts to further increase our development assistance.”

Preliminary 2018 figures indicate a slight decrease in overall collective Official Development Assistance (ODA). Taking into account the OECD's recent change of calculation methodology, the adjusted difference between 2017 and 2018 comes to a decrease of €731 million.

This decrease is due to a significant reduction in in-donor refugee spending in 2018 compared to previous years. Excluding in-donor refugee costs, the EU and its Member States have stepped up their development cooperation efforts by 4% compared with 2017.

Compared to previous years, the number of people arriving in Europe decreased down significantly. In consequence, in-donor refugee spending - which aims at assisting refugees and asylum-seekers in Europe during the first year of their stay, covering food, shelter or training - has decreased as well, by €3.3 billion - a 32% decrease compared to 2017.

Collective EU and Member States' official development assistance represents 0.47% of the EU Gross National Income (GNI), significantly above the 0.21% average of the non-EU members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

In 2018, four EU Member States provided 0.7% or more of their Gross National Income in Official Development Assistance: Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In four Member States (France, Hungary, Malta and Sweden), the Official Development Assistance to GNI ratio increased by more than 0.01 percentage points between 2017 and 2018, while it decreased by at least 0.01 percentage points in twelve Member States.

Background

The international community spelt out in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda how development financing should evolve to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Official Development Assistance (ODA) is one of the sources of financing to deliver on the international community's commitment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but it is clear that efforts to mobilise financial resources for sustainable development have to go much further.

In May 2015, the European Council reaffirmed its commitment to increase collective ODA to 0.7% of EU Gross National Income (GNI) before 2030. Since 2015, on a flow basis, ODA by the EU and its Member States has grown by 11.7%.

The ODA pledge is based on individual targets. Member States that joined the EU before 2002 reaffirmed their commitment to achieve the 0.7% ODA/GNI target, taking into consideration budgetary circumstances, whilst those that have achieved that target committed themselves to remain at or above that target. Member States that joined the EU after 2002 committed to strive to increase their ODA/GNI to 0.33%.

The Union and its Member States are also committed to collectively providing to least developed countries (LDCs) ODA amounting to between 0.15% and 0.20% of the EU GNI in the short term and 0.20% by 2030. In 2017, EU collective ODA to LDCs grew to 0.12% of GNI (€18.2 billion), the first increase in four years after having stood at 0.11% since 2014.

The data published today is based on preliminary information reported by the EU Member States to the OECD pending detailed final data to be published by OECD in December 2019. EU collective ODA consists of the total ODA spending of the EU Member States and the ODA of EU institutions not attributed to individual Member States (i.e. own resources of the European Investment Bank).

There are 30 members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), including the European Union which acts as a full member of the committee, and 20 EU Member States.

For more information

OECD press release

Memo (UPDATED)

IP/19/2075