Making European Commission aid more effective
The European Commission has made aid effectiveness a priority and has defined a strategy and action plans to implement and monitor the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness and subsequent commitments in the Accra Agenda for Action.
What has been achieved
Since 2006 aid effectiveness in EuropeAid was prioritised and placed directly in the office of EuropeAid's Director General, Koos Richelle, to coordinate implementation across headquarters and EU delegations.
The following document descibes the actions implemented by EuropeAid to increase the effectiveness of EC aid 
[27 KB] . Some highlights are:
- Detailed action plan agreed and implemented across EuropeAid, to meet the Paris and Accra commitments.
-Aid effectiveness networks: To implement and monitor the action plan
two aid effectiveness networks were set up, the first across EuropeAid services
and the second across the 46 priority countries [26 KB] where EuropeAid spent 80% of its budget (average for
2003-2005).
-Capacity development in the European Commission: Besides reflecting aid effectiveness principles in the project and programme fiches, EuropeAid organised awareness raising and training on aid effectiveness for staff both in headquarters and in Delegations.
-Addressing internal constraints: EuropeAid has worked consistently to remove internal constraints to increased aid effectiveness by, among others streamlining the number of aid instruments from 35 to 10 and revising legal and financial procedures.
-Accelerating priority actions: Further steps to accelerate progress
on the priority areas of its action plan are being implemented. Gender,
governance, and civil society organisations are specific priority themes.
"Ten High Impact Actions for 2010" [26 KB] have been encouraged by the
Director General to achieve concrete change in 2010 and is being monitored.
-Use of country systems: In 2009 the EC achieved its target of channeling 50% of its government-to-government assistance through country systems. The EC’s guidance for implementing budget support is being revised in line with requirements of the Court of Auditors and some EU member states.
-Division of labour: The EU toolkit [238 KB] was developed to support implementation of the
European Union's Code of Conduct on Division of Labour. It is based on
actual practice and examples at country level. The European Commission's study
on Benefits of a European Approach [703 KB] shows the value for money to be gained from
a less fragmented approach by donors in providing aid.
- Technical cooperation and Project Implementation Units (PIUs): the
Backbone Strategy [261 KB] 
outlines a radical change in the way technical
cooperation in the EC is implemented, and emphasises the reduction of parallel
PIUs.
Performance on aid effectiveness
The European Commission has participated fully in the OECD-DAC survey to monitor implementation of the Paris Declaration.
Based on reporting from a limited set of countries (33 for the 2006
survey and 54 for the 2008 survey) that participated in the survey, EU performance (Table C8, page 113) is variable, with progresson track
on some indicators, for example on coordinated technical cooperation, but
not on track for other areas such as use of country systems.
The 2011 OECD-DAC survey will monitor the Paris and Accra targets to report progress at the final High Level Forum in Korea at the end of 2011.
Internally the EC annually monitors its performance against the four ambitious EU targets agreed in Paris through the External Assistance Monitoring Report (EAMR) submitted by Delegations. On the basis of this monitoring the action plans on aid effectiveness are revised. For example, with 2010 as the critical year for achieving the targets before the High Level Forum, DG EuropeAid has launched the '10 High Impact Actions for 2010' which focuses specifically on making specific change in practice with regard to use of country systems; division of labour; and technical cooperation including Project Implementation Units.