The study, sampling 29 out of the 275 individual TACIS projects launched in 2000 to 2003, found that just five achieved objectives in a sustainable way, four achieved goals unsustainably, eight were "partially" successful and 12 failed...

The court's criticism focused on: lengthy delays in decision-making, poor dialogue with the Russian state and the end-beneficiaries; wishy-washy objectives and lack of proper evaluations.

"There were some cases where the Russian authorities accepted assistance, which the final beneficiaries did not actually want," the report states.

"Objectives were sometimes imprecise and not measurable, or sometimes missing, and in some cases underlying assumptions were unrealistic."

In one example, a project aimed at harmonising EU and Russian road standards failed to notice there is no EU road standard and paid for road testing equipment that was never used.

This example illustrates perfectly the feeling that many in the development community have: that when aid is spent at the European level, it is less effectively spent then when DFID spends it. There is simply no need to be spending development aid at the European Union level: it in no way contributes to the working of the single market. Yet DFID funds about 18% of the EU's aid activities. Would it not be better to put DFID in charge of how it spends its budget - and also reprioritise spending on Africa? If there are foreign policy reasons for giving money to the CIS, then let the Foreign Office spend the money: but aid money per se should be spent poverty is most dire.