The European Union and its Member States have kept their place as the world’s leading aid donor, contributing €68 billion in 2015. They have recently begun to present a united front, pulling together their combined resources and analysis into a coordinated response to partner countries’ development plans. We look at how this joined-up European approach is working in Cambodia, Laos and the Republic of Moldova.
Effectiveness
The impetus behind Joint Programming is decades-old, with the EU working to close gaps and avoid overlaps in development cooperation. Although they have come a long way towards a coherent approach, Member States and the EU are still drafting individual country strategies outlining partner countries’ political and economic contexts and development needs. Partner countries in turn are using precious resources liaising with multiple donors – against a backdrop of aid fragmentation.
Joint Programming replaces these individual country strategies with a single, cohesive document representing all EU partners. For background, please see Joint Programming: What for? Where? How?
Two main benefits of this exercise are transparency and predictability: all the donors outline the funds they will allocate per sector over the course of the programme, and the timing should be synchronised with the development strategy proposed by the partner country.
It may facilitate joint actions at a sector level, and also provides an opportunity to incorporate a variety of development initiatives in the very first stages of EU programming. These include the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the EU’s Gender Action Plan, Democracy Profile and Civil Society Roadmap.
“It’s important to streamline all the tools and plans we have,” said Fiona Ramsey, Head of Operations in the EU Delegation to Cambodia. “For example, we have an EU Country Roadmap for Civil Society – we committed ourselves to a structured dialogue with civil society, […] to exchange with civil society about our key concerns, and also understand their concerns in different sectors. Hopefully we can use that to be more efficient in the policy dialogue at a higher level based on our joint programming priorities and division of labour.”
Another way these tools can feed into Joint Programming is in the indicators used to measure progress. For example, Ramsey would like to see the indicators from the Gender Action Plan incorporated into Cambodia’s Joint Programming, so that gender equality is embedded in all aspects of Europe’s cooperation.
The success of Cambodia’s Joint Programming approach so far can be ascribed to three factors, according to Lino Molteni, Policy Officer in Aid Effectiveness at DG DEVCO, the Brussels-based development branch of the European Commission.
“Firstly, it has been a gradual and flexible process owned over time - actors at the country level were free to design their own model of Joint Programming with light guidance. The government showed understanding and got fully involved in the process. This has improved policy dialogue across the board.”
“Secondly, it built upon synergies with other EU policy initiatives. The CSO Roadmap analysis is now included in the Joint Programming joint analysis, and the roadmap indicators will be included in the Joint Programming monitoring framework during the mid-term review process anticipated in late 2016,” said Molteni. “And thirdly, EU Member States now naturally use the Joint Programming logic of ‘doing things together’ with more trust and knowledge of each other's programmes.”
Coordination challenge
Although the united approach implies greater efficiency and lower transaction costs for partner countries, in the short term it does entail more coordination on the side of the EU Member States and Delegations.
“Joint Programming hasn’t been recognised as a core part of our work in Delegations, in that it is a much bigger exercise than just the normal programming exercise,” said Ramsey. “It requires more time, more consultation, and building trust with our European partners.”
The balance between ‘HQ’ in Brussels, Delegations and Member States is still being perfected. “It’s not just a purely EU-Delegation driven process,” said Aneil Singh, Head of Cooperation in the EU Delegation to the Republic of Moldova. “We’re very keen that Member States who are enthusiastic about Joint Programming are holding the pen, providing inputs directly into the process.”
A level playing field between the different EU donors is an important starting point. “We didn’t have any Member State that was hugely important versus the rest in terms of portfolio size, so we were more or less on an equal footing which was helpful,” said Ramsey. Another levelling factor was working with an external facilitator. “We relied heavily on an external facilitator for some parts of the Joint Programming,” said Ramsey. “They had been with the group a long time and built a lot of trust between Member States and ourselves.”
Then there are relationships with non-EU donors, including continental-Europeans like Switzerland and donors further afield such as the US. Involving these parties is crucial to overall aid effectiveness, according to Singh. “We don’t want Joint Programming, with its potential to enhance cooperation with Member States, to become a barrier to cooperation with our other very cooperative development partners in-country,” said Singh. “It’s important that everybody with whom we cooperate is on board on understanding the process.”
When the EU Delegation to the Republic of Moldova began exploring Joint Programming with Member States in 2014, it also brought in Turkey, the US, the UN and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development early in the process. “These partners have continually expressed a clear interest in the process and are directly participating by providing concrete inputs into the joint analysis,” said Singh. “For example the World Bank has been carrying out its own detailed analysis of the situation in Moldova in certain sectors which is being coordinated and shared with the EU Delegation.”
Moldova is not alone in welcoming non-EU donors: At the end of 2015, 12 out of the 56 countries in which Joint Programming was underway involved non-EU development partners.
Singh would also like to see more collaboration with EU bodies which do not have offices in all partner countries, but are involved in operations or analysis. For Moldova, which has an Association Agreement with the EU, these potential partners include the EIB and EU agencies such as Frontex, Europol and the European Training Foundation. He sees this as an area where HQ can play a coordinating role, and advance aid effectiveness.
Reception
According to Michel Goffin, Head of Mission in Laos, Joint Programming is more than just a tool for aid effectiveness. In the context of increasing aid flows from emerging donors, it is also a document which can boost the EU’s political visibility.
Partner countries were often unaware of the scope of the funding coming from separate European donors. Once the EU began Joint Programming in Laos in 2014, “The government discovered that together the EU and Member States are a partner that delivers $500 million,” said Goffin. “Before that they had no idea of the sheer amount. All of a sudden the EU and Member States are seen as a very important partner.”
The same was true in Cambodia, where emerging donors such as China are increasingly active. “As European partners we were losing our voice,” said Ramsey. “By coming together and being less fragmented we could actually leverage more, because if we put all our resources together we became the largest grant partner to Cambodia.”
However, some government officials are taking time to adapt to the joined-up approach.
“It’s very new,” said Goffin. “Host governments are used to dealing with bilateral donors, Member States and the EU separately, and now we come with a document and say we are actually all together with the same message. And sometimes that has triggered political misunderstanding on the part of the government, saying ‘you have a joint agenda behind that’. So we have to consult even more and explain at a political level what it is in fact.”
For others, the benefits are already clear: “The [Cambodian] government were happy to see that we were clearly aligning with their policies and with their national development goals, and happy because they saw the breakdown in financial commitments as greater transparency and predictability of aid flows,” said Ramsey. “They also considered that by working together we were being less fragmented and easier to discuss with.”
Further Reading
- Country Roadmaps
- Joint Programming: Quick guide
- Country cases
- European Development Cooperation Strategy for Cambodia 2014-18
- EU Delegation to Moldova
- EU Delegation to Cambodia
- EU Delegation to Laos
- Joint Programming: 2016 Council Conclusions
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Lino Molteni, Fiona Ramsey, Michel Goffin and Aneil Singh, with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.
Image credit: DEVCO image library, 'With the support of many women behind me...' by Ba Futuru.
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