From where civil society stands, the continued decline in Official Development Assistance (ODA) is a warning sign about the direction of global cooperation.

For the second year in a row, aid and development financial support levels have fallen, with 2025 marking the biggest drop. Governments across Europe and beyond are tightening their budgets, often citing inflation, debt pressures, and shifting political priorities. Yet for NGOs and community partners, the consequences are immediate, structural, and in many cases, irreversible.

Local communities paying the price first

For NGOs working on the ground, the impact is immediate and severe or deeply damaging: fewer community programmes, reduced support for local partners, and growing uncertainty for the people who rely on long-term development efforts. Education initiatives stall mid-cycle, and grassroots organizations—often operating with minimal reserves—are forced to make difficult choices about which communities they can continue to serve.

These disruptions weaken the very ecosystems that sustain development progress:local civil society actors, advocacy organizations, who are essential for ensuring accountability, inclusion, and context-specific solutions. Theyare often the first to feel the strain when funding becomes unpredictable. Without consistent support, their ability to engage in policy dialogue, monitor service delivery, or respond to emerging crises is significantly reduced.

Lithuanian NGDO Platform, and many other organizations, have been clear for a long time: ODA should never be seen as just a financial transfer. It is, at its core, a partnership mechanism. It connects communities, governments, and organizations in a shared effort to tackle inequality, strengthen institutions, and build the conditions for lasting peace.

Europe’s’ Aid –short-time thinking rather than long – term strategy?

Across Europe, traditionally a stronghold of development cooperation, several donors have scaled back commitments. Data compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that European ODA flows declined between 2023 and 2025, with some of the steepest reductions affecting long-term development programmes rather than emergency aid. For civil society partners, this shift is particularly damaging: humanitarian funding may address immediate crises, but it cannot replace sustained investment in governance, education, gender equality, and local capacity-building.

The United Kingdom, once a leader in development cooperation, reduced its aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI and has since diverted a large share of that reduced budget to cover domestic refugee costs. In practice, this has meant fewer resources for long-term programmes abroad, with partner organizations left to absorb the consequences of decisions made far from the communities affected.

Germany, long considered a stable pillar of the global aid system, has also begun to scale back. Recent federal budgets have cut billions from development cooperation, justified by fiscal consolidation and increased spending on defense following Russia’s war against Ukraine. While framed as necessary trade-offs, these choices signal a clear reprioritization—away from long-term development and toward immediate geopolitical concerns.

In France, aid reductions have been tied directly to deficit-cutting measures, with hundreds of millions of euros removed from development budgets. Similarly, the Netherlands has announced structural cuts alongside a policy shift that increasingly links aid to migration control, explicitly redirecting funds toward managing arrivals rather than addressing root causes.

Nordic countries, often seen as principled donors, have also moved in this direction. Sweden has reduced its aid envelope and reallocated significant portions to domestic refugee spending, while Finland has implemented cuts as part of broader austerity measures. Belgium, too, has scaled back its commitments, citing budgetary pressures.

NGOs has repeatedly warned about this fragility - structural problem in the aid system: over-reliance on short-term, politically influenced funding, combined with insufficient support for locally led development. During years of growth, these weaknesses were easier to overlook. In today’s downturn, they are impossible to ignore.

Why more partnerships matter?

ODA has always been about more than economics. At its best, it is a practical expression of solidarity—a recognition that stability, prosperity, and peace are interconnected. Development cooperation creates spaces for dialogue, supports inclusive institutions, and reduces the inequalities that often lie at the root of conflict. When aid is cut, and when cooperation gives way to competition, those foundations begin to erode.

In a world marked by rising conflicts and geopolitical rivalry, the temptation to turn inward is understandable—but it is also short-sighted. Civil society witnesses daily how interconnected today’s challenges are: climate shocks driving displacement, economic crises fueling instability, and conflicts spilling across borders. These are not problems that any country can solve alone.

That’s why many NGOs are calling not just for restored funding, but for a renewed vision of development cooperation – one which prioritizes local leadership, strengthens multilateral systems, and protects the civic space needed for meaningful participation.

Because ultimately, cooperation is not a luxury, it is infrastructure. It underpins everything from crisis response to peacebuilding. Cutting aid in times like these doesn’t just reduce budgets; it narrows the space for collaboration, weakens trust between partners, and risks deepening the very divisions that development efforts are meant to address.

There is clear lesson from civil society’s perspectives: the case for ODA is fundamentally about relationships. And at a time when the world feels increasingly divided, those relationships matter more than ever.