The EU at the World Bank: On the effectiveness of the Union's governance in multilateral development policymaking

As a collective actor the EU currently provides the largest amount of aid to development. While financial institutions that operate in this policy field have grown in number and type, with varying outcomes in scope and impact, the World Bank is to date the major multilateral lending agency. In spite of the absence of an EU seat in the Bank’s Board, there is evidence that cooperation among EU EDs is already in place, less formal than in the sister institution of the Bank, the IMF, but, according to some, more effective relative to outcomes in decision making. At the policy level, instances of cooperation between the EU and the Bank have increased enormously in the past 15 years, notably in the cases of Europe and Central Asia since the early nineties, to be followed by MENA countries from 2000s and, last, by the prominent surge in cooperation to reduce poverty in Sub Saharan Africa. Based on empirical evidence from on-site and phone interviews, as well as on previous theoretical work on the EU’s foreign policy role at the World Bank, this paper will investigate the twin themes of consistency and effectiveness of the EU’s performance in the areas of action of the Bank, both at the decision-making and implementation levels. Last it will identify the main factors and causal mechanisms behind the variation in these outcomes, advancing elements towards an overall explanatory framework of the EU’s performance at the Bank, and of its impact on the policymaking of development.