The launch of the report was scheduled for 3:30 p.m., in Place Stéphanie, just a short walk from the elegant Avenue Louise, in Brussels. 
The room where the networking drink would later take place was on the seventh floor, overlooking the Palais de Justice, and the afternoon slipped by in a pleasantly comfortable atmosphere.

A bit too comfortable, perhaps.
As I listened to the speakers, I realised that the same word — comfortable — perfectly described not only the mood of the room but also the greatest risk of this sector: the temptation to settle in, to confuse critique with complacency.

The AidWatch 2025 report, launched on the 22nd of October 2025  by CONCORD, should have been a wake-up call.
Instead, it felt more like a mirror — one reflecting both the limits of Europe’s development policy and the paradoxes of its civil society ecosystem.

The numbers speak for themselves: EU Official Development Assistance (ODA) has dropped from 0.53% to 0.47% of GNI, with the OECD predicting another decline of 9–17% next year. One in five euros reported as ODA fails to meet basic DAC criteria. Cuts to bilateral programmes and the use of ODA for domestic or geopolitical priorities are turning what was once a solidarity instrument into a foreign-policy lever.

No one in the room denied it. But the real question is: what now?

Europe’s development fatigue

Speaker after speaker pointed to the same structural fatigue:
less flexibility, less predictability, less ownership for partner countries.
ODA is being tied to short-term priorities, diverted into guarantees and blended finance, and increasingly shaped by national interests rather than global needs.

As Tanya Cox, CONCORD’s Director, reminded the audience: “We are witnessing a mismatch between the rhetoric of solidarity and the reality of how money is actually spent” 

Natividad Lorenzo, a Commission expert from the Cabinet of Commissioner Jozef Síkela, defended the “contextual approach” of the Global Gateway and the 90 percent ODA target in the next programming cycle — yet the logic remains transactional.
As Gunjan Veda reminded the room, ODA still operates within a global architecture designed without the majority of the world’s population: “ODA may have changed its language, but not its power geometry.”

The credibility trap

CONCORD deserves credit for twenty years of persistent monitoring. Without its reports, the debate on inflated aid and policy coherence would barely exist.
But the credibility crisis it describes also affects the system it inhabits.

When civil society actors depend financially on ODA frameworks, they face an inevitable tension: how far can one criticise the system that sustains one’s own work?
This is not hypocrisy — it is structural. Yet acknowledging this dependency is essential if the advocacy space is to remain honest and politically relevant.

In that sense, AidWatch 2025 is both a mirror and a warning:
Europe risks turning development policy into a closed loop of good intentions and institutional self-preservation.

Beyond “localisation” as a slogan

The report repeatedly calls for “localisation” and “community-led development.” But localisation is not simply a matter of channeling funds through local actors; it requires transferring real power and decision-making.

ECEPAA’s experience — working with schools, local organisations and migrant communities — shows that inclusion and ownership are not abstract concepts.
They require political space, not just financial support.
Migrant and diaspora communities are not passive recipients of development; they are active producers of knowledge, bridges between continents, and agents of equity.
If ODA is to regain purpose, these actors must be included as partners, not beneficiaries.

Otherwise, localisation remains another management concept in a European conversation about “others.”

From aid to accountability

What emerged most clearly from yesterday’s debate is that Europe’s ODA system — from donors to civil society — is suffering from a deficit of accountability.
Governments inflate figures; NGOs risk soft-pedalling their criticism; institutions defend context rather than coherence.

Perhaps the next frontier is not more data, but more courage:
the courage to rethink how civil society’s independence is funded,
how policy dialogue includes Southern voices,
and how Europe measures success not by leverage or branding, but by justice and reciprocity.

ODA was never meant to be charity. It was meant to be a shared responsibility. If AidWatch 2025 reminds us of anything, it’s that responsibility starts at home —
in the institutions that design aid, and in the movements that monitor it.