Strategically ethical? The shift in the governance of the EU's humanitarian aid policy.

Piron, Alexandre
(2025) The Law and Governance of the EU Public Ethical System, An Institutional Perspective of Public Integrity in the European Union — ISBN: [978-3-031-80372-7], p. 390, accepted/in-press

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The European Union’s humanitarian aid policy is officially following the humanitarian principles of independence, humanity, neutrality and impartiality as guiding imperatives. Yet, the chapter demonstrates that, in some specific cases, the EU’s humanitarian aid funding is, in substance, following other rationales: political and strategic interests. This is particularly the case since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the advocacy for more external coherence. Therefore, the following research question was formulated: What rationales guide the decision-making process in the EU’s humanitarian aid policy in the last decade? The use of one illustrative case study (aid towards Syrian refugees in Turkey) enabled to comprehend the current difficulties for the EU, and DG ECHO more particularly, to stick to what can be considered as its ethical “spirit”. The chapter analyses the “throughput process” (the “how” question) of DG ECHO. It also tackles the outcome on the spirit of the humanitarian aid sector: is this putting at risk the EU’s humanitarian aid policy as a whole? Are we now only in what can be called ‘a humanitarian aid of State’ only based on geostrategic interests? Or are ethics (translated by the four humanitarian principles described above) still guiding humanitarian aid?
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Piron, A. (2025). Strategically ethical? The shift in the governance of the EU’s humanitarian aid policy. In Alberto Alemanno (ed.), The Law and Governance of the EU Public Ethical System, An Institutional Perspective of Public Integrity in the European Union (p. p. 390). Alberto Alemanno. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/238795