This article was published on 7 December and is available on the website of Friends of Europe. The scenario is quite familiar. If budget cuts are to be made in times of crisis, development spending is the first and easiest target for European policymakers. In preparing for the 2013 budget, several EU member states seem to have forgotten about their longstanding commitments to reach the 0,7% target of GDP as Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 2015. Cutting development budgets first is also common practice in EU institutions. In trying to broker a compromise deal on ...
Geert Laporte co-authored this article. European Heads of State were recently advised to bring more than one shirt to the 22-23 November summit to discuss the EU budget. Those who specialise in the relations between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries will definitely also need a few more shirts during the next few weeks. From 27-29 November the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) convened in Suriname, a destination European MEPs only agreed to on condition that the country’s president Desi Bouterse would not turn up. During this meeting the ACP Secretary ...
Dan Lui co-authored this article. For the first time, African Union ministers of trade and agriculture gathered last week at a joint conference in Addis Ababa. Originally scheduled for late October, the conference had been postponed since not enough ministers from AU member states had confirmed their attendance. Also this time the conference did not manage to attract a full turnout of high-level representatives from all African states and Regional Economic Communities – yet it still represented a significant moment with officials and experts from the two traditionally separate sectors and from both regional and ...
This article was published on 6 December and is available on the European Report on Development blog. ++ SERIES: BUILDING THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK++ Preparation of the European Report on Development 2013 is now well underway. It will focus on “Elements for a Post-2015 Agenda” and aims at feeding into the debate about what development framework should replace the Millennium Development Goals after their expiry date in 2015. As part of the background research work for this report, the ERD team is conducting four country case studies (in Nepal, Peru, Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire) to ensure that the report reflects ...
