Official development assistance under pressure…

26/01/2026

For the past two years, France’s official development assistance (ODA) has been under unprecedented political attack. Global aid policy is undermined by budget cuts, suggestions of inefficiency and electoral opportunism. Criticism by political stakeholders contrasts with the support for international aid and cooperation expressed by the majority of French people. This article analyses the way in which ODA is at present caught in a two-way tension: between depoliticisation resulting from increasing technicality (in terms of the vocabulary used, workplaces …) and repoliticisation because of partisan dynamics. It suggests ways of reaffirming the legitimacy, the legibility and the civic relevance of international aid and cooperation.

Author(s)

Marie Berra

Official development assistance under pressure …

… caught between a new political consensus and a crisis of legitimacy

Introduction

For the past two years, France’s ODA has been singled out for criticism by some parts of the political spectrum. This criticism, often modelled on discourse in the US, questions the sums allocated to ODA, its efficiency in practice and what the point of it is for the French voting public. ODA, however, is a very clearly defined official policy. According to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, four criteria must be met for funding allocations to be counted as ODA: the source of funding must be public institutions, funding must be allocated to countries on a list of those eligible, it must be provided on favourable conditions which may take the form of concessional loans or grants, and the objective must be ‘to support economic development and an improved standard of living in developing countries’.[1] From the European perspective, its principal objective is ‘the reduction and, eventually, the eradication of poverty’, as expressed by political ‘consensus’ among EU member states in 2017.[2] ODA as thus defined has key objectives of support for humanitarian responses and interventions, and the achievement of local and global public benefits by engaging in the fight against poverty, programmes to improve health or environmental protection. However, there is a growing gap between these objectives of ODA and the way ODA is perceived by political leaders and policymakers. The gap entails three interconnected aspects: the perception of public opinion, the change in the relationship between politics and ODA and the tension between the increasing technicality and the politicisation of ODA.

Supportive public opinion, but policy is poorly understood

Despite the contraction of the ODA budget during President Macron’s second term, a majority of the general population in France remains committed to international aid and cooperation. A 2023 survey (or ‘barometer’) of views on aid and cooperation, carried out by Focus 2030, indicates that 64% of people questioned would like to maintain or increase ODA for the poorest countries: this figure is 17 per cent higher than in 2013.[3] This support is reflected also in people’s practical or concrete commitments. More than one in two adults makes a donation each year to a charitable organisation: 17% contribute to the relief of emergencies (natural disasters or conflict situations) and 10% to the protection of human rights.[4] In 2025, 11% of French people, or five million people, volunteer on a weekly basis to help others, as members of solidarity movements.[5] In addition, there are 50,000 people employed in the international aid and cooperation sector, as well as 5,000 volunteers and thousands of helpers (for example, members of charitable organisations).[6] The sector is thus made up of a dense social and human fabric, proof of strong support for its objectives and values.

Commitment to cooperation, however, does not necessarily imply a clear understanding of ODA. The very expression ‘official development assistance’ is technical, not especially expressive, invoking a hierarchical and paternalistic vision of international relations and the colonial legacy. Problems of understanding are compounded by the increasing complexity of the financial tools and instruments employed in the aid world, which are often seen as inaccessible or the preserve of experts. While increasing technicality has enhanced the efficiency of aid programmes, it has also contributed to keeping the general public at arm’s length, so that the real impact of ODA, in human terms, is less visible. In addition, the fact that the results of ODA are often realised over the long term and are therefore not immediately visible is an additional difficulty, accentuating that sense of distance.

In this context, official aid bodies have tried to redefine the vocabulary of ODA. France’s development cooperation agency (AFD) speaks of ‘solidarity and sustainable investments (SSI)’. The government, and the EU, these days stress the idea of ‘international partnerships’. Although these efforts are meant to relate ODA more closely to concepts and values that, in theory, French public opinion supports, these vague, sweeping terms tend instead to make it even harder to grasp. This semantic slipperiness – sometimes making aid and cooperation even more technical – gives ODA’s detractors additional material to use against it.

The illusion that policy is becoming inaccessible: the increasing technicality of ODA as a defensive strategy

ODA is in a critical phase because it has been increasingly politicised. For twenty years, discussions about ODA focused increasingly on performance criteria, financial instruments and the measurement of results, which tended for a time to ‘depoliticise’ an activity that is by its very nature political.[7] Attempting to distance ODA from politics by focusing on technical issues gave it a period of respite, during which policy consensus enabled financing to increase. At the same time, it made ODA harder to grasp as an issue.

The use of technical approaches to shield ODA from politics was particularly noticeable in 2025, when the extreme right stepped up its anti-ODA attacks, accusing it of misusing public funds for inefficient projects that lacked proper scrutiny. In response, the minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs announced that he was setting up an Evaluation Committee, with a mandate to evaluate ‘the relevance of official development aid projects and programmes, from the conceptual stage through to implementation’.[8] The announcement seemed like a godsend. This committee had been envisaged since 2021, in Article 12 of the law on programmes relating to development cooperation and the fight against global inequality.[9] The launch of the committee looked like a timely response to criticism and implicitly gave credence to the idea of an evaluation deficit. The government thus relieved the immediate pressure by re-focussing discussion on less conflictual, more technical issues, where day-to-day activities (action plans, reports, meetings) mitigate political urgency. The government took this approach instead of providing political justification and reasoned argument for its investment in international aid and development. It thus, paradoxically, gave credence to the idea that ODA lacked transparency and oversight, offering its detractors an additional argument to use against it.

This course of events shows how important it is that ODA, which is essentially political,[10] − for example, in the choices made on geographical or sectoral allocations of funds that are sourced from taxpayers – should not be reduced to a simple technical exercise. Far from protecting it, increasing technicality makes ODA more vulnerable to attack when it reappears in a key role on the political stage, because it has difficulty in making clear its impact, and describing its outputs in a way people can relate to.

Politics is back: partisan restructuring and electoral challenges

Another factor that negatively impacts ODA is the reshaping of France’s political landscape. Since the beginning of the 21^st century, ODA has benefited from a broad cross-party consensus in France, underwritten first by the Millenium Development Goals, and then by Agenda 2030. This consensus was most powerfully expressed in the unanimous adoption 2021 of the law on programmes relating to development cooperation and the fight against global inequality, with the objective of meeting by 2025 the 0.7% of GDP target for ODA. From 2023 this consensus fell to pieces. Successive governments – led by Attal, Barnier and Bayrou respectively – made swingeing cuts in France’s ODA budget, responding to the demands for austerity by parliamentary parties on the right, and to attacks by the extreme right. While other political groupings in parliament remained committed to the values and objectives of ODA, they failed to reverse the trend to cut its budget, given the strength of the opposition.

The challenge to ODA is based on economic arguments. In the context of France’s overall deficit, ODA is ‘non-essential’ expenditure i.e., expenditure that can be cut back. This line of argument makes ODA liable to budget tightening, which may be done at less political cost than cutting other parts of the budget. Against a backdrop of economic deficit and political instability marked by the threat of dissolving the National Assembly and a form of cohabitation within the executive branch, electoral considerations dominate, pushing decision-makers to refocus on domestic issues deemed to be of more obvious concern to the electorate. Seen as too remote an issue for voters and functioning as it does over the long term – too long a timeframe – ODA is labelled superfluous expenditure. This reading of the situation is wrong on three counts.

ODA helps to enhance the stability of fragile states and regions by providing support to conflict- and crisis-prevention programmes, and by encouraging economic development and reliable, sustainable institutions. Treating ODA as an optional budgetary extra undermines its effectiveness as a strategic instrument, whose value lies in its capacity to bring about long-term, sustainable changes: the cost of not promoting these changes will, in the end, be much greater than the cost of doing so.

The portrayal of ODA by politicians and the media as a costly and non-transparent part of the national budget derives from a biased perspective that masks ODA’s true objectives and its positive long-term benefits. ODA accounts for less than 1% of the national budget;[11] and is a long-term investment in potential solutions to the structural causes of crises, in the capacity to respond to emergencies and in the approach to major global challenges such as health, gender equality, education, the fight against different types of violence (notably gender-related), and poverty eradication. Funding provided for mother and child health, for example, has reduced under-five infant mortality by 50% since the beginning of the 21^st century.[12] ODA helps to enhance the stability of fragile states and regions by providing support to conflict- and crisis-prevention programmes, and by encouraging economic development and reliable, sustainable institutions.[13] Treating ODA as an optional budgetary extra undermines its effectiveness as a strategic instrument, whose value lies in its capacity to bring about long-term, sustainable changes: the cost of not promoting these changes will, in the end, be much greater than the cost of doing so. Furthermore, this treatment of ODA relies on a misinterpretation, or biased view, of public opinion. Many political leaders believe that the French people would reject ODA in favour of greater spending on domestic issues. Surveys, however, indicate the opposite: the international aid and development sector enjoys constant, even growing, support in France. Support in principle for aid and development is not lacking; the problem is rather the lack of clear understanding of what ODA means in terms of government policy.

Redefining aid and development policy for the French people

In response to all the questions and challenges, the aid and development sector should do more than simply react to attacks; it must once again become a force for change. This requires not only defending ODA but also rethinking the fundamentals: how ODA is conceived, implemented and explained. Financing must be maintained at significant, stable levels, and should be flexible and adapted to needs, so as to have both short- and long-term impact.

Making ODA meaningful again entails first recognising its colonial legacy. Matthieu Gautier, chair of the franco-senegalese NGO Futur au Présent (The Future Now) – International, says that it is essential to ‘decolonise ODA’, by creating a joint, egalitarian governance structure, free of all forms of domination, that can rehabilitate multilateralism and enable a shared sense of universality to emerge.[14] This entails mobilising the means to implement sustainable policy in the poorest countries, protected from transient political and economic events.

Second, decolonisation must be matched by effective localisation of resources and knowledge, which supports local civil society organisations with direct, flexible, predictable financial resources, and adopts inclusive, representative decision-making processes. Responses that are locally managed are more relevant, and activities have greater legitimacy.

Third, it is essential to strip away excessive technicality from ODA discourse. We need to talk about ODA in terms of its human and social impact, making a link between aid and development at local, national and international levels. If you foreground stories, faces and tangible results, you enable aid policy to reconnect with the lived reality of those whom it is intended to support. And it is vital that education, including the provision of information to the voting public, be enhanced, with funding specifically allocated for the purpose. Education programmes on citizenship and on international aid and development build understanding of global interdependence, and nurture long-term commitment. Countries that invest in such programmes have higher ODA/GNI ratios, and the general public tends to have a more favourable view of international aid and development.[15]

Seeking to protect itself from politics by becoming more technical, it has lost its connection with the general public. However, ODA is inherently political, reflecting a world view, a commitment to solidarity and an acknowledgement of interdependencies. Defending ODA today entails making it more comprehensible, better grounded in reality, and more accessible to the French people.

ODA is not simply experiencing a budgetary crisis but is in the very midst of political and symbolic redefinition. Seeking to protect itself from politics by becoming more technical, it has lost its connection with the general public. However, ODA is inherently political, reflecting a world view, a commitment to solidarity and an acknowledgement of interdependencies. Defending ODA today entails making it more comprehensible, better grounded in reality, and more accessible to the French people. By acknowledging the political dimension, while strengthening governance structures, transparency and localisation, international aid and development can reaffirm its legitimacy and continue to represent official strategic policy, at the intersection of social and economic justice with the common good.

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Marie Berra is Coordination SUD’s head of analysis and advocacy on humanitarian challenges. Coordination Sud is a collective of 188 French international aid and development organisations.

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[1] OECD, Aide publique au développement : définition et champ couvert (Official development assistance : definition and coverage), 2025.

[2] The EU’s development cooperation policy is governed by Article 208 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, while the declaration on the ‘new European consensus on development’ set out its guiding principles.

[3] Focus 2030, Baromètre de la solidarité internationale (Survey on international aid and cooperation), September 2023.

[4] IPSOS, Baromètre de la solidarité, ‘Qui fait des dons en France et quelles sont les motivations des donateurs ? (Who makes donations in France, and what are donors’ motives?)’, March 2024.

[5] Recherches & Solidarités, La France bénévole (Volunteering in France) 2025, May 2025.

[6] Coordination SUD, Étude Argent et ASI (tr. Note : ASI = associations de solidarité internationale) sur les modèles socio-économiques des ONG françaises de solidarité internationale : 2016 – 2020, April 2022.

[7] Lucile Maertens & Raphaëlle Parizet, « On ne fait pas de politique ! » Les pratiques dépolitisation au PNUD et au PNUE (‘We’re not playing politics !’ Depoliticisation in practice in UNDP and UNEP). Critique internationale, 76(3), p.41-60, 2017.

[8] Légifrance, Décret n° 2025-117, 8 February 2025, Article 1.

[9] Légifrance, LOI n° 2021-1031, 4 August 2021, article 12.

[10] Alain Le Roy & Jean-Michel Sévérino, Diversification et fragmentation du financement public du développement (The diversification and fragmentation of official development assistance), FERDI Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development, No. P321, 2023.

[11] Ministère de l’économie, des finances et de la souveraineté industrielle et numérique (= France’s Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industrial and IT sovereignty), La plateforme des finances publiques, du budget de l’Etat et de la performance publique (Report on public finances, the State budget and government performance), 2025.

[12] UNICEF, Under-five mortality, March 2025.

[13] Steven Radelet, Michael Clemens & Rikhil Bhavnani, Aid and Growth, Finance & Development, Volume 42(3), September 2025.

[14] Matthieu Gautier, Sortir l’aide publique au développement de l’impasse : pour une solidarité

internationale renouvelée (Rescuing official development assistance from the impasse: renewing international aid and development), Fondation Jean Jaurès, 26 May 2025.

[15] Edited by Ida Mc Donnell, Henri–Bernard Solignac Lecomte & Liam Wegimont, L’opinion

publique contre la pauvreté (Public opinion against poverty), Ch. 1, P.15-40, OECD, 2003