The European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Jozef Síkela, has made Brussels’ strategy clear in a recent interview with Spain’s leading left-wing newspaper: the withdrawal of actors such as the United States from the international aid arena is not seen as a failure of the model, but as an opportunity to double down on Europe’s commitment to the ideological structure that has shaped global politics in recent years.
In statements to El País, Síkela openly lamented the suspension of the USAID program under Donald Trump’s administration, describing it as “a bad message for the development agenda.” However, far from seeing it as a crisis, he interprets it as a chance to expand European soft power. “If we don’t do it, we leave that vehicle to our rivals, such as China and Russia,” he warned, signalling that Brussels’ logic is not to reconsider its goals, but to occupy all the empty space that the American pullback has left open under the excuse of confronting these two powers.
Through the Global Gateway program, the European Commission aims to mobilize up to €300 billion to “create jobs, value chains, market access, and education.” But behind these seemingly neutral formulas lies the continuation of a funding architecture that has for years been imposing the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which large social and political sectors have identified as instruments of social engineering.
Síkela acknowledges that “the fragmented traditional development aid agenda has not delivered the expected results,” but far from questioning its essence, he advocates strengthening its economic impact and attracting more private capital. The priority, he asserts, is “to convince European citizens that if we don’t invest today, the future cost will be much higher,” comparing the climate fight with a disease that does not disappear just because people stop talking about it. A discourse that, under the banner of pragmatism, continues to justify multimillion-euro investments in ideological initiatives questioned in the name of efficiency.
When confronted with the growing resistance in Latin America, where leaders like Milei or Bolsonaro have openly criticized the SDGs as an ideological agenda, Síkela responded disdainfully: “We can turn it into an advantage.” For the commissioner, others abandoning the climate race merely opens space for Europe to advance, develop new technologies, and, in the future, monetize them. There is no room for debate on whether the EU should be pushing this agenda beyond its borders; the important thing is to be “fast, focused, and selective.”
Not even sanctions imposed on non-democratic countries slow the machinery. Although he assured that Europe “does not want to collaborate with non-democratic regimes,” Síkela stated that aid will continue to flow because “there are also people in need in these countries.” This approach, under a humanitarian mask, allows the maintenance of influence networks in strategic territories like Syria, Afghanistan, or Cuba, where the human rights discourse becomes a flexible tool to advance European geopolitical interests.
At a time of American withdrawal and the rise of new powers, the EU does not merely want to maintain its position: it wants to occupy the void left by USAID to establish itself as the main architect of the global future, without revisiting the model that has, in the name of supposed universal progress, undermined national sovereignties and traditional values.
