France opposes foreign aid cuts in EU budget

France has warned against drastic cuts to the EU’s development spending in the next seven-year budget.

Speaking at the POLITICO Brussels Playbook Live event on Tuesday, French European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad pointed to the “detrimental consequences” of cuts to USAID under President Donald Trump as a cautionary tale.

“These conversations should not be held through a budgetary lens … The question is how do we make our instruments effective?” Haddad said.

EU governments, including France, are lobbying the Irish presidency of the Council of the EU — which is steering the budget talks — to reflect their positions in a new budget negotiating document, known as a negobox, that is expected to be unveiled in early October. 

Several capitals have signaled that savings to the Global Europe Fund — a €200 billion pot governing the bloc’s support to foreign countries — are preferable to cuts to domestic policies, such as agriculture, defense and regional payments.

The European Commission has internally simulated the impact of slashing its development aid budget by as much as 40% in its next long-term budget. However, the Irish presidency is expected to propose milder cuts.

According to Haddad, the real challenge is to ensure that EU policy on trade, migration and development is better organized across different institutions.  

“All of this is very scattered through the institutions today. Sometimes [we are] not able to really leverage all the different instruments for our external policy,” he said.

Speaking alongside Haddad, his Polish counterpart Ignacy Niemczycki said that increases to foreign aid from the last budget have been smaller than in other areas such as defense and competitiveness.

“Even if we see some minor changes, it doesn’t have to automatically mean that it will need to get rid of whole programs, but then it really depends on where we land with the negotiations,” he said.