Aid, Trade and Development: World Bank’s Views on the EU’s Role in the Global Political Economy

With a total of more than 45 billions of Euros the European Union (EU) is by far the largest donor in the world. Since the launching of the EU Consensus on Development in 2005, in addition to its sheer weight in the provision of flows, the Union has also stressed its renewed support towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (Commission 2008). Furthermore, as estimated by OECD/DAC/Commission reported data, most of the the pledged aid increase (90%) in the context of the MDG-focused policies is expected to come from European countries (Commission 2008, 5). The emphasis put on aid effectiveness at the level of global negotiations has highlighted the need, at the EU level, to work towards increased policy coherence. Such an effort has then added a further dimension to the original prominence of scaling up in the global challenge towards the eradication of poverty. The redefinition in the making of the EU development policies that has ensued has entailed a search for horizontal coherence across different policy domains, prompting a drive towards increased policy consistency for the sake of both the EU’s internal cohesion and the effectiveness of its external action. The Union’s historical prominence in the area of trade, as well as its sustained effort to improve the quality of its action in migration, security and environmental fields warrant higher alert to the attainment of such coherence through the pursuit of development objectives. This chapter explores how the EU is viewed at present in one of the major international financial institutions in the world, as well as a key actor in the context of multilateral development policies: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), also popularly known as The World Bank (WB). Looking at perceptions on the EU’s external action in both trade and development fields appears of paramount importance. On the one side it returns the opinion of the major multilateral lender on the major donor in the field. On the other side, in the light of the search for policy coherence implied in the Union’s new drive towards development, it provides new elements to track the EU’s quoted effort in the reform of its overall external action (Commission 2008). Mirroring the EU’s power, foreign policy role and independency through the eyes of the World Bank becomes a crucial step to track the ‘relevant Other’s’ perceptual elements that have been at play in these developments, possibly providing elements for a constructive redefinition of the EU’s own role in world politics.