European Development Fund

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789282361634
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (616 download)

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Download or read book European Development Fund written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With total resources of €30.5 billion for the years 2014-20, the European Development Fund (EDF) is the largest geographic instrument of the EU in the area of development cooperation. The Fund focuses on countries and territories which have special historical ties with some Member States: the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), which receive the bulk of funding, and the overseas countries and territories (OCTs) of the EU. The EDF presents significant peculiarities from a budgetary perspective, since it is intergovernmental in nature and remains outside the EU budget, despite the fact that most of its resources are managed by the European Commission. The Fund finances a broad range of actions in beneficiary countries, with disbursements for social and economic infrastructures together accounting for more than half of total EDF payments for 2010-12. While stakeholders and analysts note both achievements and weaknesses of the EDF, a long-standing idea concerns the possible inclusion of the Fund in the EU budget (i.e. its so-called 'budgetisation'). Supporters of the idea consider that the move would bring advantages such as stronger democratic legitimacy of the EDF as well as an increase in the efficiency and in the effectiveness of EU's development aid through a simplification of the relevant framework. The new target date for budgetisation is 2021, after the expiry of the Cotonou Agreement, a comprehensive international agreement setting out the wider framework of ACP-EU relations. Since the EDF is the financial envelope of this international agreement, its future is tightly linked to the evolution of ACP-EU relations. Negotiations on the post-Cotonou scenario should be carried out under the new term of office of the European Commission. The new European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica, intends to start a broad consultation and dialogue process on the topic in 2015.