ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main elements of the Global Consensus and its European translation, and creates a set of benchmarks against which the foreign aid policies and performance of the Central and Eastern European donors can be measured. With the end of the Cold War, donors lost an important political reason to give aid, tax payers were disillusioned, and the dominating economic theory at the time suggested that aid is wasteful and even counterproductive. Thus the decline in aid volumes during the 1990s should not be a surprise, which is especially pronounced when compared to the GNIs of donor countries. It is difficult to dispute that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have had a profound effect on the discursive level of the international aid system, even if achieving the goals has not been successful in many areas. The set of measurable poverty reduction targets, later evolving into the MDGs, was originally recommended by the OECD.
