THE EU'S CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL STABILITY AND SECURITY

Objective. The objective of the research is to assess the EU's contribution to global stability and security by analyzing the state, dynamics, and structure of its official development assistance. Methods. The study employs the following methods and approaches: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction (for substantiating the instruments available to contemporary countries to support global peace and security, particularly the importance of ensuring peace and security through official development assistance); generalization and systematization (to identify the state and structure of the EU's official development assistance); dynamic series analysis (to identify trends in EU official development assistance in 2021-2023); tabular analysis (to visually present the dynamics and structure of EU official development assistance). Results. It is established that in 2021-2023, the EU increased both the absolute volume and the share of external action financing in its overall budget, reflecting the growing role of foreign policy in the EU's overall strategy, driven by the escalation of geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions. It is determined that during the period under analysis, the EU continued to strengthen its status as one of the largest investors in ensuring global peace and security, remaining one of the world’s largest donors of official development assistance. Official development assistance is justified as a tool of the EU’s "soft power," through which the EU promotes its values, ensures the realization of its strategic interests, and helps address a wide range of socio-economic issues in recipient countries and regions (reducing inequality, developing infrastructure and markets, strengthening governance, fighting corruption, curbing illegal migration, decreasing support for radical groups, etc.), thereby contributing to long-term stability and realizing the concept of security through development. It is found out that during 2021-2023, the following features of the EU’s investments in peace and security were noted: prioritizing projects aimed at developing social infrastructure and services (education; governance and civil society; health care; other social infrastructure and services; demographic policies/programs and reproductive health; water supply and sanitation) – with an average of 45.3% and 39.7% of commitments and payments of official development assistance, respectively; focus on governance and civil society development (43.1% and 44.7% of commitments and payments for projects aimed at developing social infrastructure and services, respectively); significant discrepancies in the country structure of commitments and payments of official development assistance; prioritizing official development assistance to countries and territories with higher-than-average income – an average of 22% of the total payments in official development assistance; focusing on providing official development assistance to African countries (an average of 36.4% of commitments and 32.5% of payments of EU official development assistance, or 6131.5 million euros and 5125 million euros, respectively) and European countries (an average of 23.7% of commitments and 20.6% of payments of EU official development assistance, or 3734.5 million euros and 3675.5 million euros, respectively); increasing the share of commitments in official development assistance to Asian countries (by 3.1%) and Europe (by 5.7%); decreasing the share of commitments in official development assistance to African countries (by 8.8%), America (by 0.3%), Oceania (by 0.2%); increasing the share of payments in official development assistance to developing countries by 8.6%.