The European Union, the World Bank and the Policymaking of Aid: Cooperation Among Developers by Eugenia Baroncelli

Author:Eugenia Baroncelli [Baroncelli, Eugenia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317032809
Google: AnWCDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43332027
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

7 Europe, Central Asia and the challenge of double transitions

7.1 Introduction

EU–WB cooperation in the ECA (Europe and Central Asia) region is different from all the other instances of joint EU–WB action: there the Bank very frequently operates within the EU or in the EU immediate neighborhood.1 With the exception of Russia and the five Central Asian partners, reference has been made to the existence of a ‘triangular relationship’, encompassing the partner country, the Bank and the Union (World Bank ECA 2011, 12). Supporting simultaneous transitions to democracy and market-based systems has confronted the two organizations with exceptional challenges. The balancing of security, energy and development goals in the EU external agenda on the one side, and the restructuring of the WB programs in the new EU MS,2 on the other, have multiplied the layers of the EU–WB hybrid delegation. Yet they have also created the potential to pool expertise and resources to help accession in candidates and potential candidates, and to support sustainable development throughout the region. Since the end of the Cold War, these challenges have proven to be the catalyzer of what is perhaps the thickest set of EU–WB region-based initiatives to date, including the setup of a joint EU–World Bank office in the aftermath of the Kosovo crisis, active between 1999 and 2008.

Views from the World Bank have pointed to an ‘excellent and cooperative dialogue’, supported by regular contacts with the Commission, EU MS bilateral donors, the EIB and the EBRD. At times, these highly positive instances were contrasted with less successful occurrences, with the EU–World Bank relation burdened by region- and country-specific fragmentation as well as by ‘lack of strategic vision’.3

More particularly, voices from the World Bank management qualify the EU policies as broadly effective in the Balkans, and, by and large, in all non-CIS countries (Commonwealth Independent States). At the end of the 2000s, the EU’s approach to the Balkans appeared ‘innovative’ and ‘fast’ in reacting to the multiple changes that had occurred in the 1990s. The launch of the Stabilization and Association Agreements, the support given to trade integration in the area, as well as the reliance on non-governmental instruments to advance the governance agenda stand out – in the eyes of the Bank – as notable EU successes in ensuring coherence between the political and the economic tracks of its composite mission.4 Some concern has emerged however about the development implications of Brussels’ differential treatment of partners in the ECA region. Echoing feedbacks from national authorities, voices from the World Bank quoted the partial exclusion of CIS and Central Asian partners from the EU development effort, noting how the latter were either approached by the Union with a subservient tone (Russia), or an altogether lecturing attitude. Allegedly, the inconsistency matched the EU fluctuating approach to development, at times highly political, at times more prone to the economic side of the matter. The duty to support partner countries (‘clients’) in their quest for development, has made it easier for some, in the Bank’s management

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