European NGO confederation finds development money being spent on tackling refugee crisis and border security rather than fighting poverty and inequality

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A report published on Tuesday by Concord, the European NGO confederation for relief and development, documents an emerging trend among member states to divert aid budgets from sustainable development to domestic costs associated with hosting refugees and asylum seekers.

Some of the expenditure items EU countries report as aid do not translate into a real transfer of resources to developing countries or, ultimately, to people who are poor and marginalised, the report has found.

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This is not the first time that NGOs have reported that EU monies are increasingly being spent on tackling the refugee crisis and border security, rather than fighting poverty and inequality.

But this time the Concord AidWatch report contains data from the OECD CRS dataset complemented by updated national figures. In some cases, data from the European commission and Eurostat is also used.



Concord says that some EU countries are mis­reporting some of their official development assistance (ODA) expenses by including costs which, under existing guidelines, should not have been counted.

The reporting of non­-eligible migration-­related expenses in Spain and Malta, or the misreporting of refugee costs in Hungary, are among the examples cited.

Inflated aid is calculated on the bilateral component of EU aid. Many of the components – imputed student costs, refugee costs, interest and tied aid – do not apply to multilateral aid.

The report found that in 2014, the EU28 and the European institutions inflated their aid by €7.1bn ($7.6bn), which represents 12% of all aid flows.

Some countries inflate aid more than others. While the percentage of inflated aid for Luxembourg is estimated at 0.3% of the country’s total aid, and at 0.5% for the UK, it is, in contrast, 50.6% for Malta, 30.9% for Austria and 27.2% for Portugal.

The EU institutions are no different from the member states, having “inflated” their aid by 9.9%.

Concord makes the case that while helping people arriving in great need in Europe is a moral imperative, this does not mean that funding for refugees in-country is something that should be reported as ODA.

Luxembourg, Poland and Bulgaria have already decided not to report refugee costs as ODA.

According to the OECD, only money spent during the first 12 months of stay should be reported as ODA. But other countries account refugee-related expenses as ODA.

Some countries include all the costs relating to asylum seekers, regardless of whether they are granted refugee status or not. In most cases, they stop counting once a decision has been made. In other cases, only the costs incurred after a decision has been made are included.

For example, Hungary does not differentiate between costs relating to the first year (which are eligible to be reported as ODA) and those relating to subsequent years, which should not.

Spain is using ODA to support and equip security forces in transit countries, essentially building walls in Ceuta and Melilla, its north African enclaves.

Malta has also traditionally used almost half its aid budget to pay for migrant detention centres. This expenditure should not be reported as ODA under existing guidelines.

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The fact that refugee costs are reported bundled together makes it extremely difficult to ensure that member states are complying with existing guidelines, the report stresses. It also raises the issue that if EU countries use ODA to pay refugee costs, there is a risk that it might be at the expense of people in developing countries.

Concord AidWatch is also concerned that the refugee crisis might be used as an excuse to count as ODA non-­eligible expenditure relating to general migration flows.

The EU is merging the refugee crisis and migration issues from a policy and budgetary perspective, when in fact the two issues are completely different from a legal and aid-­reporting point of view.

In addition, the report finds that climate finance is often counted twice, towards both climate and development targets, when in practice the EU aid budget has stagnated for the last few years, and is clearly insufficient to meet either development or climate needs individually.

The report makes the following recommendations: