20. Believes that the ROM instrument should be used proactively and more rapidly when critical situations occur or persist; emphasises that corrective measures should be taken without delay and the nature of deficiencies at the design level should be structurally assessed; stresses the indispensability of providing Parliament and the budgetary control authority with a clear view of the real extent to which the Union’s main development objectives have been achieved; 21. Considers the External Assistance Management Reports from Union delegations as a useful corporate reporting instrument contributing to the assurance building and performance measurement of each Union delegation; notes the decreasing share of projects with implementation issues from 31.1 % (980 projects out of 3151 ongoing projects) in 2016 to 23,8 % (or 1059 projects out of 4444 ongoing projects) for 2017; is concerned, however, that 27 % of current projects whose implementation is difficult, the main reasons are the low perceived capacity or performance of implementing partners, low interest and commitment of stakeholders or insufficient co-financing by partners, factors that should be identified at an early stage in the political dialogue and donor coordination;

## Implementation of the EDF development aid

#### Evaluation of the eleventh EDF

22. Takes note of the statement of the evaluation of the eleventh EDF that (i) ‘there is a real threat that EDF will be pushed into responding to agendas that distance it from its primary objective of poverty alleviation, which are difficult to reconcile with the EDF’s core values and compromise what it does well’ and (ii) that ‘despite consultations, government and [civil society organisation] views (with some notable exceptions such as in the Pacific region), have rarely been taken account of in programming choices’ and that "the EDF11 programming thus used a top-down approach to apply the concentration principle but at the cost of the Cotonou Agreement’s central principle of partnership"; regrets that the Commission has until now completely ignored these findings; considers however that peace building and addressing root causes of migration are fundamental aspects of sustainable development; 23. Notes also that according to the eleventh EDF evaluation, by April 2017, nearly EUR 500 million from the EDF reserve had been disbursed to support the Commission’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, nearly EUR 500 million had been allocated in emergency support to individual countries and EUR 1,5 billion had been disbursed to the Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa; whereas the EDF contributes also to the new European Fund for Sustainable Development;

#### Mid-term review of implementation of external financial instruments

24. Welcomes the fact that the evaluation shows that the EDF objectives were largely relevant to the policy priorities at the time of its design and that it was generally fit for purpose and aligned with the values and objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); 25. Welcomes that some countries where EDF geographic programmes operate have

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