Development Cooperation of the ‘New’ EU Member States. Beyond Europeanization. Edited by Ondřej Horký‐Hluchán and Simon Lightfoot. Palgrave, 2015. Hardcover: USD100.00. E‐book is also available.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1756 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Author | Raphaëlle Faure |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
BOOK REVIEW
Development Cooperation of the ‘New’EU Member States. Beyond Europeanization. Edited by Ondřej Horký-Hluchán and
Simon Lightfoot. Palgrave, 2015. Hardcover: USD100.00. E-book is also available.
Development Cooperation of the ‘New’EU Member States: Beyond Europeanization edited by Ondřej Horký-Hlucháňand
Simon Lightfoot relates the experiences of ten Central and Eastern European countries
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in the field of international cooperation
since joining the European Union. These ten countries are bound by a common history; they all underwent a double transition
from the former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) to the EU and from the communist and socialist East to the
liberal democracy and social market economy of the West. Each chapter covers a ‘new’Member State written by an expert
author, often native to the country, which allows for the analysis to be set in the broader political, economic, social and historical
context. In addition, two short case studies consider the ways in which these ten countries failed to upload their transition
experience to become a key element of the EU development policy agenda.
Each country chapter follows a similar structure starting with an overview of the country’s past experience as a donor. Each
has a donor experience dating back to the pre-1989 era. Some provided aid directly (e.g. Czech Republic or Romania) while
others contributed to Soviet development cooperation programmes without directly implementing projects or disbursing funds
(e.g. Baltic States). In all cases, aid was ideologically driven and included a large military and defence component. Following
the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the USSR, these CEE countries went from being aid donors to aid recipients which
led to a substantial loss of their donor experience.
Once the 10 became candidate countries to join the EU, they were required to set up development cooperation programmes
in line with EU norms and principles. This happened to varying degrees depending on the countries: there are better students
who see taking these international norms on board as a way to enter the international scene on par with bigger and more
established players (e.g. Czech Republic or Poland); others simply view these norms as a constraint and adopt them more in
rhetoric than in practice (e.g. Hungary or Romania). These norms, coming from the EU but also other international organisations
like the OECD or NATO, are often felt to be imposed from the outside with little prospect for the ten countries to influence
them. As a result, EU accession has not had the expected impact on the development policies of these countries, something
the authors refer to as ‘shallow Europeanization’.
As current EU donors, the 10 CEE countries share many similarities. The institutional framework nearly always gives a
coordinating and policy-setting role to the Foreign Affairs ministry, with more or less implementing power, and gives line
ministries the possibility of providing aid directly. Finance ministries tend to be in charge of the aid budget. The legal frame-
works around development cooperation vary; most countries have some legal text, whether a law or a decree, setting out the
main objectives of the aid programme, but others do not. In terms of aid volumes, none of the countries have met the EU
objective set for them to spend 0.33% ODA/GNI by 2015; the financial crisis clearly had a negative impact on aid budgets,
but, the authors argue, it is unlikely the target would have been met had there been no economic slowdown. The majority of
aid is channelled through multilateral organisations (this includes the EU budget which is usually the largest part), with a small
bilateral budget handled at the domestic level. The geographic focus of the ten countries’ODA tends to be on the Eastern
neighbourhood and the Western Balkans, countries with which they share a similar history pre-1989; this often indicates
continuity with their past donor experience. They all identify their ‘transition experience’as being their defining comparative
advantage as a donor. However, looking more closely at their sectors of focus, the transition experience does not always feature
strongly. The majority of countries display low political and public support for development cooperation; in fact, development
cooperation is sometimes mistaken for the policy to pursue domestic development as a recipient of foreign aid. Some exceptions
do exist though and this appears to be changing as younger generations have a better grasp of what international cooperation
means. Finally, the country comparisons show there are varying degrees of involvement from civil society and the private sector
in implementing projects and influencing the development policy. However, the tendency is for those to be quite weak and to
play a minor role.
The book offers invaluable insight into the development cooperation policies, systems and programmes of ten countries for
which little information is readily available. The historical as well as the EU integration perspectives offer an interesting frame-
work through which to analyse the journey covered by these ten countries since the Cold War era. Three points struck me in
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Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 36, 232–233 (2016)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1756
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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