The European Union is to stop all bilateral aid payments to China, India, Brazil and other fast-growing economies as a result of a review into development spending.
In plans put forward on Wednesday, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said that 17 countries in all were effectively graduating from being recipients of European aid, including some of the world’s most dynamic economies, to “new partnerships” that are not based on bilateral aid.
Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand are among those that are to lose funds – sometimes worth hundreds of millions of euros a year – from 2014, when the new EU policy comes into force.