The risks associated with the EU’s humanitarian aid managed from a distance are not satisfactorily addressed, according to an audit report published on Wednesday by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
In 2024, the EU spent €2.5 billion to provide humanitarian aid in 116 countries. The European Commission’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) is the EU’s main actor in humanitarian aid.
In practice, EU humanitarian aid is not delivered directly by the Commission but channelled through more than 200 partners, such as UN agencies and international humanitarian organisations.
However, it uses a ‘remote-management approach’ when providing aid through its partners in areas that are hard to access, either due to security concerns or restrictions imposed by local authorities. Under this approach, humanitarian organisations have to rely on either their local staff or private sub-contractors who have access, or use local implementing partners to deliver the aid.
The EU auditors identified specific risks in this approach, such as inaccurate needs assessments, inadequate coordination and reduced operational quality which hampers the effectiveness of aid. There are also significant security risks, risks of fraud or aid-diversion, and the resulting reputational risks.
For all these reasons, the EU’s policy is to fund remotely managed actions only as a last resort or in about 8 % of the EU’s total humanitarian spending during 2019 and 2023.
The Commission approved 164 humanitarian actions under partial or full remote management in 10 countries - Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen - totaling €918 million in EU co-financing. The auditors examined a sample of actions in Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine.
“Humanitarian workers are often prevented from reaching people in need,” said Bettina Jakobsen, the Danish ECA Member responsible for the audit. “The EU has a useful framework to deliver life-saving aid even in hard-to-access areas. We all want it to work at its best, and so we are calling for it to be improved.”
According to the auditors, applicable guidance contains an unclear and outdated definition of remote management. This can mean that situations handled under remote management are not duly signaled as such, which may impact the monitoring and reporting of EU-funded actions.
Another issue identified by the auditors is that the implementing partners of EU-funded NGOs are not certified in terms of their ability to implement EU funds in line with the EU’s humanitarian aid principles and rules.
Furthermore, even EU-based certified partners often chose to implement actions via affiliated headquarters based outside the EU. There should be reasonable assurance about the technical and administrative capacity of these implementing partners charged with managing EU funds.
The auditors found issues in reporting by humanitarian aid partners, and some remote management reports were inaccurate or lacked information. The fact that partners are also not required to state what action has been managed remotely means that their reporting is not transparent.
In its reply, the Commission welcomed the audit and stressed that only a small part of EU’s total humanitarian spending is managed remotely in areas where lifesaving aid to people in need would otherwise not been possible to deliver.
While questioning some findings in the report, the Commission recognised the need of adjustments of the remote management approach and accepted all audit recommendations aiming at improving the approach.
A key development in 2025 is the very sizeable funding cuts from major donors (US, Germany, UK, etc.) and the shutdown of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The Commission warns that these changes will inevitably widen the already worrisome funding gap at end 2024 (USD 24 billion), with drastic consequences to the global capacity to provide humanitarian aid.
Core humanitarian principles
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