Foreign-aid champion Europe is giving more than ever

EUROPEAN COUNTRIESODA)EUODAEUEUODAGNI are the world’s most generous givers of foreign aid, or official development assistance (. The and European governments donate close to half the global total. Populist parties tend to dislike foreign aid, and one might think that Europe’s rightward tilt would have caused it to drop. Indeed, aid did fall in the early 2010s during the euro-zone crisis, and again from 2017 to 2019. Yet in 2020 both global and European rose to their highest levels ever: $161bn worldwide and $80bn from Europe.Part of the reason was covid-19. members provided over $9bn in fresh pandemic-related aid to poor countries, mostly for health care. (Norway, not an member but one of Europe’s bigger donors, added a further $300m.) On average, European countries’ rose to 0.5% of their gross national income (). The average among all donor countries was 0.32%.