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European Commission

Ranking: 5

Score: 4.91

Detailed information

In fifth place overall, the European Commission’s stellar performance is in pillar 5, where it is perceived to be strongly supportive of accountability in humanitarian action and of encouraging regular evaluations. This is strongly supported by its membership of, attendance at, and funding of the main accountability initiatives and the number of evaluations, for which it does better than all other donors. Its evaluations are not just aimed at reviewing ECHO-funded operations, but often form the basis of wide consultation with stakeholders to improve coordination. This has paid off with a high score for consultation with beneficiaries on monitoring and evaluation and for supporting effective coordination efforts.

The EC’s wider engagement with civil society is underscored by its excellent ranking for promoting the role of NGOs. ECHO has fostered strong partnerships with its 200 NGO partners that have signed its framework partnership agreement, which essentially pre-certifies NGOs that fulfill prerequisite requirements, such as sufficient financial, technical, and administrative capacity to be implementing partners. ECHO also applies strict criteria regarding the quality and performance of its partner NGOs and carries out evaluations of its partner NGOs’ activities every year and assesses whether they have taken up the recommendations from previous years.

The EC has had limited success in pillar 2. It scores well on measures to reduce the vulnerability of communities at risk, for example, by funding and strengthening local capacity to deal with crises. It is a major supporter of IFRC work in the area of capacity-building and preparedness. However, it receives a low rank for supporting long-term development goals.

A key characteristic of the EC’s humanitarian aid is its lack of flexibility. In pillar 1, it is deemed to do rather poorly on the flexible allocation of funds across emergencies and, similarly, in pillar 3, it receives very low ranks for reducing the earmarking of funds and for the flexibility of its funding. This reflects the EC philosophy that funding according to needs implies earmarking funds to those needs. This is underlined by the lowest rank for any country for the extent of earmarking. ECHO is an operational donor with very active field presence, with 43 field offices, including six regional support offices. This, along with its large budget, allows it to carry out its own needs-assessments in the field and to “go it alone” in allocating its humanitarian budget accordingly. Its strong field presence and multilateral character enables it to play a strong role in coordination efforts.

It has, thus, been less reliant on multilateral organisations for implementing humanitarian action and, compared to its size, channels a much smaller share through the multilateral channels than most other donors. This may be changing. Since 2002, when it channeled an unusually high 62 percent of its funding through NGOs, there has been a shift towards a more balanced portfolio and increased funding to the UN and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The EC funding share to the UN had increased from 29 percent in 2002 to 37 percent in 2006, while the funding share to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) stood at 11 percent, with the remaining 52 percent going to NGOs.

Relying on its own needs assessments has presumably secured the EC its good fifth place for the indicator assessing funding based on needs assessments in pillar 1, but performance in this pillar is also marred by low grades—especially vis-à-vis its overall ranking—for upholding the basic principles of humanitarian action, for example, alleviation of suffering, impartiality, neutrality and independence. Its eighth place for funding forgotten emergencies and fourteenth place for funding vulnerable countries determined by its own global needs assessment methodology highlight other weaknesses.