Policies
Foreign Aid Spending
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Foreign aid spending is a government's policy on the voluntary transfer of resources, financial or in kind, from its own country to another, known in international relations as aid, international aid, overseas aid, economic aid or foreign assistance. Its character and scope vary with intended purpose, the conditions attached to it, its source, and its urgency, and a government's foreign aid position covers both the scale of that spending as a share of national income and the conditions it attaches to disbursement, including whether aid is aligned to the government's own foreign-policy priorities or offered on other terms.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Conditional
2024 manifesto commits to restoring the 0.7%-of-GNI aid target only once fiscal conditions allow, with no stated timeline; in government since July 2024 Labour has not yet restored it.
Opposes
Government fiscal policy under Macron's presidency has cut France's official development assistance budget sharply since 2024, moving it off track from its own legislated 0.7%-of-GNI commitment.
Opposition is to maintaining aid spending at its prior level; the government cut Official Development Assistance from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income by 2027 to fund a defence spending increase, announced in this statement to the House of Commons.
Sources
Aid (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead sectionQuote, Lead section
aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is, from the perspective of governments, a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another.
Executive Order 14169, Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (GovInfo)
Government Publishing Office (GovInfo)Position Held By: Trump Administration, Section 2Quote, Position Held By: Trump Administration, Section 2
It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.
PM Statement on Defence Spending: 25 February 2025 (GOV.UK)
Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing StreetPosition Held By: Starmer Government, PM statement to the House of Commons, 25 February 2025Quote, Position Held By: Starmer Government, PM statement to the House of Commons, 25 February 2025
This government will begin the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
France reneges on its Official Development Assistance commitments (Focus 2030)
Focus 2030Position Held By: Macron Presidency, Focus 2030 tracker citing the French 2025 Finance Act and its April 2025 amending decreeQuote, Position Held By: Macron Presidency, Focus 2030 tracker citing the French 2025 Finance Act and its April 2025 amending decree
the Finance Act confirmed a 37% cut to the ODA programme budget compared with 2024. In April, a decree increased the cut to 39%, a reduction of nearly 2.3 billion euros.
What do the party manifestos say about international development? (Bond, quoting the 2024 manifestos)
Bond (UK network for organisations working in international development)Position Held By: Labour Party (United Kingdom), 2024 Labour Party general election manifesto, international development section, as quoted by BondQuote, Position Held By: Labour Party (United Kingdom), 2024 Labour Party general election manifesto, international development section, as quoted by Bond
return to 0.7% "as soon as the fiscal situation allows"
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