MEPs insist that they won’t allow EU governments to dictate the terms of the bloc’s next seven-year budget, and have called for an extra €25bn in spending on the EU’s foreign policy agenda.
The EU’s ‘Global Europe’ development budget is looking vulnerable as the ‘frugal’ countries and other blocs push for cuts to the 2028-34 EU budget.
After loudly demanding more oversight of the EU’s €300bn Global Gateway scheme, national ministers are now skipping its own board meetings. “It’s a major part of the budget, but it’s not really understood,” said the Irish liberal MEP Barry Andrews, who chairs the parliament’s development committee.
Reforming humanitarian aid supply chains will help every aid euro go ‘further and faster’, says the EU. But budgets are only likely to keep falling.
The EU will be ‘strategic’ and likely add more conditions to its development aid funding, EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday.
At $44bn [€38bn], more development aid was sent to Ukraine than to the whole of sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, as overall official development assistance slumped by 23 percent.
