EU aid for food and nutrition security: donor coordination and specialization

As the number of actors involved rises, the world of development assistance is becoming increasingly complicated. In recent years, most donors have therefore recognized the need for more coherent and better coordinated aid efforts to improve aid effectiveness and avoid overlaps and unnecessary duplication of efforts. This paper investigates the coherence and coordination of European Union (EU) development policies aimed at enhancing food and nutrition security. We find that although EU has shown great political commitment towards enhancing the coordination of development policies, progress has been limited. A quantitative assessment of the distribution of EU aid for food and nutrition security for the period between 1995 and 2013, reveals that although the adoption of the Code of Conduct in 2007 appears to have set in motion a downward trend in the dispersion of aid - mostly through increased selectivity in terms of recipient countries – aid proliferation is still rampant. In addition, we find no evidence of improvements in terms of overlap between EU Institutions’ and Member States’ efforts.