“Economic Models of Aid Effectiveness in Moldova” — research paper by Berlin Policy Hub fellow published
In their research paper, Sergiu Gaibu, Program Director at the Moldovan think tank Expert-Grup, and Theocharis Grigoriadis, Assistant Professor at Freie Universität Berlin, analyse the effectiveness of EU development aid to Moldova and the key challenges to be met in delivering it.
According to the authors the analysis suggests that aid commitments and the number of aid projects are conducive to higher levels of socio-economic development. The results for aid disbursement indicate a similar trend, even though they are less robust. The EU development aid appears to be effective in the medium and long-run, especially if Central European donors like Austria, Slovakia and Romania are involved. Furthermore, the study found that aid disbursement in Moldova is much lower compared to aid commitments, revealing a large unexplored potential of EU development aid in Moldova, which is mostly due to governance issues. Thus, the authors argue that the EU should foster transnational partnerships that bypass central government budgets and strengthen the implementation of projects at the local level in cooperation with subnational administrative bodies and local civil society.
The research paper has been elaborated and published in the framework of the Berlin Policy Hub. The project is part of the “Europeanization beyond process”-Initiative. It is supported by the Open Society Foundations and aims at fostering the network between researchers from Eastern Partnership countries and their EU counterparts.