Lithuania has built 19 schools in Afghanistan, and is working to improve access to primary school for 6,000 children. Estonia is protecting the rights of children in the North Caucasus through support to a UNICEF led initiative. Polish Aid is improving access to drinking water in Angola and Tanzania. These are only few examples of Europe’s newest development partners strides to foster development in countries in their region and beyond; and they are eager to do more.

Eastern Europe’s emergence on the development scene received another boost in early March when the World Bank hosted a five-day forum for 25 representatives from Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Finance from ten of the EU’s newest member countries. The aim: to discuss how new donors, formerly aid recipients, can most effectively assume their roles as development partners and shape their aid programs. The workshop, organized in response to requests from several EU10 countries, is part of an ongoing effort by the Europe and Central Asia region and the Global Programs and Partnerships Group (CFP) to find new ways to engage with new development partners and assist in building their national capacity for managing development assistance.

"This workshop gave us an opportunity to learn from the World Bank’s rich expertise in areas crucial for our countries as new donors,” said Vladimirs Karols, Director of the International Financial Policy Department, Ministry of Finance of Latvia. “In addition, it has been a unique forum to share the vision and structure of our national development policies and has enabled us to build an invaluable network with the Bank staff and colleagues in neighboring countries.”

The workshop tackled a range of development assistance policies and practices including aid coordination at the country level, focusing on results, and engagement of taxpayers around the importance of development. The program included presentations of actual donor coordination experience in Afghanistan, Tanzania, Georgia, and Moldova, as well as public administration and governance, climate change, Community Driven Development, and education in Africa.

"It is very gratifying to work with the EU new member states in their emerging role as donors on the international stage after years of being recipients themselves,” said Orsalia Kalantzopoulos, World Bank Country Director in the Europe & Central Asia Region. "This is how development is supposed to work. The experience and ideas that these countries bring to the table from their recent transition will assist the Bank in helping developing countries in other parts of the world to meet the challenges of development. We are looking forward to developing closer relationships through technical assistance on aid coordination, study tours to IDA countries, and multi-donor trust funds.”

The feedback from the workshop program was enthusiastic, as participants demonstrated that they came not just to listen, but also to share their experiences in development and their unique perspective from being at the other end of the development spectrum. There were many lively discussions around crucial questions of how to organize aid, how to work with IDA (most of the countries are supporting IDA15), and how to use partnerships and trust funds as instruments for cooperation. The forum provided an additional channel for reaching out to new development partners while strengthening their ownership of and support to global development efforts.

"Most of these countries are already playing a global donor role, including through IDA, for which we are very appreciative,” said Margret Thalwitz, Director in the Concessional Finance & Global Partnerships Vice Presidency (CFP). “We wanted to reach out to them on other aspects, too, as EU NMS shape their role in the development landscape. Results, instruments of development finance, and coordination with country and other partners were of particular interest to participants. We see this form of interaction as the next stage in our relationship with countries as they move beyond borrowing."
 
"We came to Washington bringing our experiences, ideas, and also concrete questions related to how to best design and implement national development policies. We left the seminar with the valuable knowledge we shared, a better idea of how to proceed further at the national level, and a clearer vision for how we can work together in the future,” said Anamaria Almasan, Deputy Director for EU External Affairs and Development Assistance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania. “The seminar was indeed a perfect opportunity to strengthen the partnership between new EU member states in the field of development aid.”

The commitment to increasing development efforts in New Member States is evident. The Official Development Assistance targets for new EU member states is 0.17 percent of GNI by 2010, almost doubling to 0.33 percent of GNI by 2015. If this event was any indication, EU New Member States are up to meeting the challenge.