The European Union needs to get better at managing humanitarian aid from a distance, especially when it can’t get workers into dangerous areas, according to a new audit released today by the European Court of Auditors. Between 2019 and 2023, the EU spent €918 million on 164 humanitarian projects that had to be run remotely in 10 countries, representing about 8% of total humanitarian spending during that period. The auditors looked at projects in Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine and found serious problems with how these operations are designed and carried out. Remote management is supposed to be a last resort when aid workers can’t safely reach people who need help.
Remote humanitarian aid comes with built-in problems that make it much trickier than regular aid work. It’s hard to figure out what people actually need when you’re relying on secondhand information that might be wrong, biased, or just made up. Coordination between different groups becomes a mess, and the quality of aid often suffers as a result. There are also big risks of fraud, aid getting stolen or diverted, and damage to the EU’s reputation when things go wrong.
ECA Member Bettina Jakobsen, who led the audit, explained the basic challenge facing humanitarian workers. “Humanitarian workers are often prevented from reaching people in need,” she said. “The EU has a useful framework to deliver life-saving aid even in hard-to-access areas. We all want it to work at its best, and so we are calling for it to be improved.” The current system has potential but needs major fixes to work properly.
One of the biggest problems the auditors found is that the EU’s guidance on remote management is outdated and unclear about what actually counts as remote management. This means some projects that should be flagged as remote operations aren’t being properly labeled, which screws up monitoring and reporting. The auditors also discovered that many NGO partners working with local groups haven’t been properly certified to handle EU funds according to humanitarian principles.
The audit found that reporting on remote projects is often inaccurate or missing important information, and partners aren’t even required to say when they’re managing something remotely. This leaves EU citizens, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the dark about which countries, activities, and results are being delivered through remote management, making it impossible to hold anyone accountable for how taxpayer money is being spent.
