EU 40% development aid cut would be ‘drastic betrayal’ of values, says top MEP

EU governments are preparing to slash the bloc’s development budget by up to 40 percent in the bloc’s next seven-year budget – in the latest pushback against aid spending. The draft seven year 2028-34 budget proposed by the EU Commission allocated €200bn to the so-called Global Europe heading, designed to promote the bloc’s foreign policy and development agenda and to “advance sustainable infrastructure, market access, and economic interests”. It also proposes a €15bn crisis reserve for ‘global emergencies’. The commission wants to boost the common provision fund, the part of the EU budget that provides the guarantees that finances projects under the EU’s Global Gateway programme. EUobserver understands that EU spending plans for Ukraine and Global Gateway would be exempted from any budget cuts. The debate falls into a wider pattern of EU member states and others, including the United States and the UK, viewing development budgets as low-hanging fruit when it comes to finding spending cuts. After years in which EU institutions’ support helped to mitigate national budget cuts made by member states, the preliminary aid figures for 2025 show that both EU member states and the EU institutions are now reducing official development assistance (ODA) simultaneously: ODA from EU institutions fell by 13.8 percent, the steepest drop in a decade while ODA from the EU-27 dropped by 9.9 percent. “Drastic cuts would be a betrayal of everything the EU stands for in the world and only mimic the short-sighted ideology behind president Trump's USAID cuts, which have already had a devastating impact,” said Barry Andrews, the chair of the European Parliament's development committee. He described the threat of 40 percent cuts as “alarming”.