Only Three EU Countries Hit the Aid Target of 0.7% of National Income

A commitment older than most of the countries keeping it

In 1970 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a target of 0.7% of gross national income for official development assistance from wealthy countries. The European Union has reaffirmed it repeatedly, most recently with a deadline of 2030.

In 2024 the EU as a whole gave 0.5%.

Three Member States meet the target: Luxembourg at 1.00%, Sweden at 0.79% and Denmark at 0.72%. Germany at 0.68% is close enough that a small movement in either direction changes the count.

The Nordic and Benelux pattern

Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark at the top, with the Netherlands and Germany behind them, is a long-standing grouping in development assistance. All five have maintained comparatively high aid budgets across changes of government over decades, which is unusual for a spending category with no domestic constituency.

Luxembourg at 1.00% is giving half again the international commitment, and its small population means the absolute sum is modest — which is exactly why a percentage of national income is the right unit for this comparison.

The bottom

Cyprus records 0.04%, Hungary 0.09%, Bulgaria 0.13% and Slovakia 0.14%.

These are Member States that acceded to the Union after 2004 and were themselves net recipients of development and cohesion funding within living memory. The commitment applies to them as EU members, and the collective EU target is a collective one; individual national targets differ for newer Member States.

Stating that is necessary for the ranking to be read fairly. A figure of 0.04% against a 0.7% benchmark is a large shortfall, and the benchmark was not designed with these economies in mind.

What the measure includes

Official development assistance is defined by the OECD Development Assistance Committee, and its boundaries are contested in ways that affect the numbers here.

Spending on refugees within a donor country during their first year counts as aid. So does some debt relief, and certain administrative costs. In years of high arrival numbers, in-donor refugee costs have accounted for a substantial share of several European aid budgets — money that is spent domestically and reported as development assistance.

This study reports the figures as published. It does not adjust them, and readers comparing 2024 with earlier years should be aware that the composition of the total has shifted more than the total itself.

Why it belongs in a globalisation category

Development assistance is one of the few economic flows between rich and poor countries that is decided politically rather than by markets.

Every other indicator in this category — imports, income flows, external debt — measures something that happens because firms and investors chose it. This one measures what governments chose, and the range from 1.00% to 0.04% is a range of political decisions rather than of economic circumstances.