From Colonial Legacies to the ‘Tax Turn’: The EU's Shifting Discourse on Development Financing and the Evasion of Responsibility

Abstract

Abstract

The European Union (EU) and its Members States are collectively the world’s largest provider of Official Development Assistance, making the EU a key actor in international development. Yet, we know little of the EU’s development finance discourse and its evolution over time. The article remedies this by exploring the historical discursive changes in the EU’s political relations towards the Global South, using as a case the EU’s development financing discourse and the perception of responsibility. This is important because changes in development financing extend beyond technical arrangements – they are deeply political matters that reflect and remake power relations, historicity, and coloniality in the relationship between the EU and the Global South. Drawing on a genealogical-inspired approach, the article analyses official EU policy documents spanning from 1957 to the present and demonstrates a substantial change in the EU’s perception of responsibility vis-à-vis the Global South – ultimately pushing the development financing responsibility from the first to the latter. Central to the transformation is what the article names the ‘Tax Turn’ – an increasing emphasis on Domestic Resource Mobilisation through tax collection – in the EU’s development financing discourse. The EU's recentring of responsibility moreover provokes a fundamental change in the underlying philosophical ideas of responsibility for development, which not only alleviate the EU from its obligations and prepares the ground for a post-aid future, but also risks undermining its credibility with Global South partners at a moment when securing such alliances is strategically vital.