Is Foreign Aid Responsive to Environmental Needs and Performance of Developing Countries? Case Study of the Czech Republic.

This paper examines the responsiveness of foreign aid to environmental needs and performance of developing countries using, as an example, the Czech Republic. It focuses on the environmental component of foreign aid, which is defined as the development intervention of the Czech Government, which can be expected to have positive environmental impacts in target countries. The provision of environmental aid is based on the assumption that the Czech Republic has practical, transferable experience of qualitative improvements in the environment following the collapse of communist regime. Flows of environmental aid were determined by analyzing and categorizing individual development aid projects in the period 2000 to 2015. Regression analyses were employed to explain the pattern of Czech environmental aid allocations. The results show relatively limited reflection of the recipient’s environmental needs in the distribution of Czech environmental aid. Only two environmental objectives were significantly echoed in actual aid flows. The first was transfer of advanced environmental technologies and reductions in energy consumption, approximated by carbon dioxide emissions per capita. The second was protection of biodiversity, represented by the extinction risk of sets of species. The other five objectives did not play significant roles in environmental aid allocations. Above that, other factors not related to the environmental needs and performance of recipient countries affected Czech environmental aid. Among them, historical ties to other former communist countries were of high significance. The findings call into question the environmental objectives of Czech foreign aid and point to the need for transparent criteria for the allocation of environmental aid.

Part III Rules for the Compatibility of State Aid, 5 Aid Exempted from Notification to the Commission: The General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER)

This chapter explores the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER). Article 108(4) TFEU allows the Commission to issue a regulation exempting Member States from the notification obligation as regards certain categories of aid, provided certain conditions are respected. The Council determines these categories in advance by means of a Regulation adopted on the basis of Article 109 TFEU. In 2008 the Commission adopted the GBER and repealed the previous regulations. In the GBER, the Commission exempted from the notification obligation seven categories of aid, by laying down general and specific compatibility conditions for aid regarding regional development, SMEs, risk capital, research and development, environmental aid, disadvantaged and disabled workers, and training.