ABSTRACT
This article provides an overview of the emergence of development aid donors in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores the definitions employed to characterize these donors before going on to examine the challenges faced in creating a development policy in the CEE states. It outlines how a soft acquis from the EU, weak governmental structures, low political will and low public understanding prevented the policy from acquiring strong roots. As a result, the economic crisis, which is used to frame the debate, has knocked all the states in the region off course. Finally, it situates the papers in this special issue in the wider context of the overview and the wider literature and summarizes the main questions raised by the special issue: development cooperation as an expression of foreign policy interests, the normative role of the other international and European actors, the advantages of the CEE development cooperation programmes, and their embodiment in a wider societal context.
