Reconfiguring the relationship between the European Commission and local partners: an analysis of the European Union’s humanitarian aid policy.

This paper focuses on the contractual relationships between the European Commission’s Office for Humanitarian Aid (DG ECHO) and local partners in the field: national governments and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Considering the recent global dynamics composing the international humanitarian aid environment, the EU is also struck by the growing importance of collaborating with local partners when implementing the aid in the field. The ‘localisation’ of the aid, understood as empowering local partners (mostly NGOs) in affected countries to lead and deliver humanitarian aid in opposition of collaborating with international implementing partners, is depicted as an answer to inefficient aid. Indeed, given the growing number and complexity of crises, localisation offers a comprehensive answer to them. However, and mainly due to the difficulty to adopt such an approach, little evidence in the field and in exploratory interviews support this claim of more localization of the funding decisions from DG ECHO. The paper answers the two following question: To what extent has DG ECHO developed since 2016 its direct funding towards local partners? And what could explain this variation between official discourses and the actual implementation of this localization process? The triangulation of nine semi-structured interviews with contemporary literature and external reports analyses the phenomenon of localisation and its recent evolution in the EU’s humanitarian policymaking. The purpose is to offer a comprehensive understanding of the reasons behind the gap between official discourses and the little evidence of localized funding from DG ECHO towards local partners in the field. By focusing on the relationship between DG ECHO and local implementing partners, this paper has a twofold purpose: firstly, to contribute to the recent academic field on the analysis of the depth and nature of interactions (i.e. fundings) between these two types of actors, in comparison with the long-standing international implementing partners (IOs and INGOs); secondly, to further contribute to the understanding of the global concept of ‘localisation’ as an answer to inefficient aid.