The dissertation examines how the development aid policy, both in the context of national budgets and European Structural and Investment Funds, is being used as an instrument for achieving foreign policy objectives, and it is in this sense primarily beneficial for countriesdonators. Dissertation is focussed on two main European Union member states: the Republic of France and Federal Republic of Germany. By changing the paradigm from the one in which the least developed countries have the most benefit from development aid policy to the paradigm that, on the long-term, greatest benefits precisely have the countries that are the initiators of the same development aid, dissertation argues that older, bigger, politically and economically more powerful European Union member states use development policies assisting less developed members, candidate and other countries to promote their own interests and achieve goals of their foreign policy. In attempt to demonstrate the influence of France and Germany through development aid policies, the new interpretation of power-distribution mechanisms in international relations is offered. The dissertation correlates the foreign policy of the founding countries of the European Union with the benefits they derive from the implementation of development aid policies to prove that the provision of development aid to less developed countries benefit primarily to those who initiate it rather than to those who receive it. Development aid thus becomes an instrument for achieving and maintaining power in international relations. Studies of the benefits that older EU member states have from the implementation of development programs in less developed countries of the European Union, i.e. initial advocates of development aid policies in the context of European structural and investment funds, are unpopular and almost taboo. Instead of research, a political discourse on altruism is emerging that development programs benefit exclusively to recipient states. From the realist theory perception, interest is a key factor in interstate action. Thus, the benefits of implementing development assistance policies in newly arrived or candidate countries that are smaller, poorer and politically weaker by older, larger and more powerful European Union countries need to be explored. Following this, the dissertation proves that the major EU states have not given up their intention to increase their power, which is immanent to all states, but have already sophisticated the means to achieve dominance over the newly arrived EU states. Eastern European countries admitted in the fifth wave of enlargement (2004 and 2007) marginally addressed the issues of negative consequences of the membership in the European Union, and the consequences of the implementation of the Structural Funds were presented exclusively positively with the idea of a large economic prosperity by reaching the standards of Western countries. It also implies that such assistance should help achieving equality within the EU and that it is in the function of achieving the value of solidarity. Academic papers covered by development aid policies and the benefits of the initiating countries focus on international aid and "third world" countries (Alesina, Dollar, 2000; Boone, 1996) and to some extent address the indirect interest of the initiating countries in the context of corporate profits and global and regional market dominance of developed countries. However, the European Structural and Investment Funds should also be understood as a form of development aid and demonstrate how net contributing countries benefit from their implementation in underdeveloped EU countries. The dissertation explores the paradigm of older, more powerful and larger member states of the European Union towards newly arrived and underdeveloped members i.e., explores the extent to which foreign policy, in the context of soft and / or smart power in the modern world of global capitalism and dominant ideology of liberal democracy, are more powerful weapons than hard power. Traditional mechanisms of domination in international relations, such as military force in quantitative and technical aspects do not meet the security challenges of the modern global system. Power is no longer possible alone through brutal military force. Therefore, the development assistance policy mechanism in the context of smart power serves as a substitute instrument by which the initiating states maintain relations of domination and perpetration, which encourages the deepening of inequality, not its reduction. Thus, the dissertation proves that power no longer lies exclusively in territory and military power and even that the same instruments are no longer the most effective. Significance and strength in international relations is measured by the high degree of influence and the ability to form the policy of a subordinate country in our own interest. Thus, it is not a transformation of interest into altruism, but a transformation of the way power is achieved and increased in international relations especially in the conditions of global interdependence i.e., the transformation of instruments of power and power itself. It is also illusory to expect that more developed countries will allow or help other countries more than a measure that would jeopardize their primacy. The dissertation offers view that the new balance of power in international relations is based on a network of interdependence within supranational political community and that powerful states position themselves as the main actors within the networks they create. In that way, great and powerful states, "centres" become leaders in policy making and information flow. On the example of the European Union, the dissertation explores the benefits that development aid policies have for the initiating countries, primarily for France and Germany, and tries to understand their positions within them power network. The dissertation also explores how inequality deepens from the Marxist view of economic domination by capital possession and means of production, strictly distinguishing growth from development. Development, as a systematic and general category of economic progress, is significantly slower in recipient countries, while in some cases it is not present at all. By penetration of the capital of more powerful states of the union, France and Germany, their political influence towards the newly arrived member states within the EU is also growing. It is hard not to see that it is far more common for the production of large industries in Western Europe to move east to new and poorer members taking a significant portion of the workforce under its patronage. Thus, the governments of the new members are forced to compromise and are in subordinate position given that the economic existence of a significant part of the electorate depends on the capital of the elderly and the economically stronger member states. Furthermore, by opening the market, larger and more powerful EU member states are attracting educated people from eastern members. Economically, the centres of financial power and most of the capital and banking industry are located in the west of the EU, while on the poorer east moved the manufacturing and processing economic sectors. This does not reduce inequality but deepen it. On the trail of Marxist criticism, the development of newly arrived states in the EU is not possible to the extent of Western countries due to the uneven redistribution of surplus values. By using European Structural and Investment Funds as a form of international aid, older and more powerful countries are creating interest communities whose economic levers govern political decisionmaking processes. This dissertation relies on previous analyses of the emergence of inequalities in international relations, and on political economies, without which it is not possible to fully understand modernity. The dissertation relies on works of authors like John Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Paul Baran, but also on works of Karl Marx, Immanuel Wallerstein and Ferdinand Braudel. From theories of international relations, the dissertation builds on insights from the realist theories when it comes to the analysis of interests and power as two central categories of these theories. International politics is in its essence still politics, which means that the analysis of power relations in it is of central importance. How the countries in modern Europe, after the Second World War and especially after the end of the Cold War still achieve and maintain power? Although development aid to the less developed is not the only mechanism, it is definitely one of it, especially if we understand it through the paradigm of soft power or smart power. To interpret development aid from the perspective of some awakened consciousness or altruistic motives is certainly insufficient and probably wrong. The dissertation is based on the analysis of power relations in works of both classical realists (Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, etc.) and neorealists (Kenneth Waltz, Samuel Huntington, etc.) who analysed the behaviour of states from the perspective of their attitude towards international system. Marxist theories of international relations are also crucial to help explain the spread of inequality and global domination of elites, i.e. exploitation of political and economic elites of the states-initiators of development aid over poorer population of recipient country. Although the Marxist theories in Croatian political science were represented in the works of Radovan Vukadinović (e.g. in the book Theories of International Relations, 2005), until the recent publication of the collection Marxist Theory of International Relations (Jović, 2018) they were "forgotten". This dissertation contributes to the development of Marxist theories of international relations and corresponds with literature on inequality, which has become more numerous in the last years in the English-speaking world (e.g. Piketty, 2014; Milanović, 2016, etc.). Issues of inequality in Croatian political science are analysed in the context of public policies (see the discussion on Županov initiated by Dolenec, 2014; and in which Štulhofer and Burić participated, 2015; Burić and Štulhofer 2016; Rimac, Burić and Štulhofer 2017), while this dissertation place emphasis on international relations. It shows that the same tendencies that increase inequality within one state also appear in relations between states. Dissertation uses theories of globalization which explain how the world has become globalized, and therefore policies, including development aid policies, are today far less limited by state borders. From the works that belong to the theories of globalization, dissertation uses contributions of Anthony Giddens (Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives, 2003; Europe in the Global Age, 2007), and George Soros, Paul Krugman, Francis Fukuyama and Joseph Stiglitz. Globalization has ambivalent effects on the development of countries: it is not necessarily positive for all participants in global relations and carries risks such as exploitation, subordination, and inequality in international relations. The dissertation is therefore placed in the area of the risk analysis and it explores the effects of globalization for countries that entered it as less developed and less powerful (Beck, 1992). Finally, the dissertation relies on the literature on EU enlargement and the process of Europeanisation of the former Eastern Europe. Europeanization is not just an unequivocally positive process for all actors, but in countries that are objects of Europeanization produces both positive and negative effects that are in modern political science forgotten (Grubiša, 2005; Dinan 2014).