From Aid Recipients to Aid Donors? Development Policies of Central and Eastern European States¹

The papers in this special issue were presented in a two part panel discussion, The ‘East’ Meets the ‘South’: Global and Development Policies of Central and Eastern European States, at the annual convention of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA) in Istanbul in June 2010. A number of these papers were also presented at the EADI/DSA Conference in York in September 2011 under the auspices of the EADI Working Group, Development Aid of Non-DAC Donors. We would like to thank all the people who attended the panels for their constructive comments and especially our referees, who did such a thorough job on all the papers.

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the emergence of development aid donors in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores the definitions employed to characterize these donors before going on to examine the challenges faced in creating a development policy in the CEE states. It outlines how a soft acquis from the EU, weak governmental structures, low political will and low public understanding prevented the policy from acquiring strong roots. As a result, the economic crisis, which is used to frame the debate, has knocked all the states in the region off course. Finally, it situates the papers in this special issue in the wider context of the overview and the wider literature and summarizes the main questions raised by the special issue: development cooperation as an expression of foreign policy interests, the normative role of the other international and European actors, the advantages of the CEE development cooperation programmes, and their embodiment in a wider societal context.

Key Words:

• Central and Eastern Europe
• development cooperation policy
• economic crisis
• EU accession
• OECD DAC

Notes

The papers in this special issue were presented in a two part panel discussion, The ‘East’ Meets the ‘South’: Global and Development Policies of Central and Eastern European States, at the annual convention of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA) in Istanbul in June 2010. A number of these papers were also presented at the EADI/DSA Conference in York in September 2011 under the auspices of the EADI Working Group, Development Aid of Non-DAC Donors. We would like to thank all the people who attended the panels for their constructive comments and especially our referees, who did such a thorough job on all the papers.

The Mediterranean countries, Cyprus and Malta, which make up part of the EU-12, are excluded from our analysis.

Part of the problem is that the acquis here is seen to be ‘soft law’ or political, rather than legal, commitments and political will is lacking, especially during the recession.

It is worth noting that just two years before joining the EU, Poland was still receiving $1,160 million in development aid, which, as an ODA/GDP percentage, worked out to 0.6 per cent (Grimm and Harmer 2005, p. 10).

We would argue that missing field research and politically driven, bluntly pro-EU wishful thinking has led to the excessive optimism on the convergence of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ member states' development policies in non-academic or semi-academic research.

Palacký University has probably the only full interdisciplinary study programme in the CEE countries, from the Bachelor's to the PhD level.