he Seoul and European consensuses on development: is a common platform on Ukraine possible?

Abstract

In the context of the tasks of the post-war recovery of Ukraine’s economy and social sphere, a comparative analysis has been carried out of the conceptual foundations of international development assistance provided by the G20 countries, in particular the newly industrialized countries, within the framework of the Seoul Consensus on Development, announced at the G-20 Seoul Summit (2010), and the European Union and its member states within the framework of the new European Consensus on Development (2017). It is shown that the former focuses on growth primarily through investment in infrastructure and solving long-term structural problems of development, and the latter on increasing well-being and fighting poverty. The Seoul Consensus, despite the participation of Western donors, including the EU, in its formulation, largely reflects the principles and messages of newly emerging donors representing the leading new industrial states. The Seoul Consensus is currently a unique strategic compromise on international development aid not only between the West represented by its leading world powers and the European Union, on the one hand, and the largest new industrial states of the modern world - on the other, but also between the Beijing Consensus and the Mumbai Consensus - alternative strategies of socio-economic modernization and sustainable economic growth put forward by China and India, respectively, in their active competition for leadership among the countries of the Global South. The change in the geopolitical and geo-economic landscape has forced the EU to review the criteria for the distribution and prioritization of development aid in order to be able to compete and cooperate with new donors such as China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. The new European consensus emphasizes the instrumentalization and securitization of development, with less attention to democracy and human rights. This shift objectively narrows the gap between traditional and new donors of international development assistance. The author substantiates the prospect of further analysis of the convergent potential of the above-mentioned consensuses in the direction of developing based on the unique geopolitical and geo-economic positioning of Ukraine in the modern world, the "Kyiv Consensus on Development" as a joint conceptual, strategic and political platform of the international donor community for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.