European Court of Auditors. Special report 14/2023: Programming the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe – Comprehensive programmes with deficiencies in the methods for allocating funds and impact monitoring

Programming is the process through which the EU defines its priorities for international cooperation. Our audit assessed whether the Commission and the European External Action Service had programmed the newly created Neighbourhood, Development, and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe appropriately. We found that the geographical programmes were comprehensively designed, addressing a broad range of partner country needs and EU priorities, but there were deficiencies in the methodologies used for allocating funding to partner countries and in the setup of the monitoring framework. We recommend that the Commission and the EEAS improve the methodology for allocating funding and the assessment of the impact of EU support, focus the scope of the programming process and simplify and consistently use the indicators in the multiannual indicative programmes.