What Is the Direction for the EU’s Development Cooperation after Lisbon? – A Legal Examination

Jointly the EU Member States and the European Union provide more than half of all development assistance in the world. The European Union's development cooperation policy was first launched with the Treaty of Rome in 1957, but only in 1992 were specific provisions on EU development cooperation introduced at Treaty level. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, most of these provisions were carried over in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

The Lisbon Treaty has, however, introduced a number of both minor and major novelties, and certain parts of the provisions have been re-arranged. Moreover, the Lisbon Treaty proposes to introduce a higher degree of consistency in the European Union's external relations - including also its actions in the field of development cooperation. This article sets out to provide a brief but systematic examination of the extent to which the substantive provisions of the Lisbon Treaty will affect the direction of the Union's development cooperation policy. To this end, it first provides an outline of how this policy has developed from the Union's inception until the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. It then goes on to identify the changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty before finally providing an evaluation of the changes.