EU Development Policy [What Think Tanks Are Thinking]

During his annual ‘State of the Union’ speech on 9 September 2015 in Strasbourg, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, called for a bolstering of European development policy. He urged member states to increase their development aid spending and announced the creation of a €1.8bn trust fund for Africa.

The European Union’s development policy is a key instrument in its relations with the outside world, with the objective of eradicating poverty in a context of sustainable development. However, the Union and many of its member states are reducing, rather than increasing, their development aid budgets in real terms, at a time of financial pressure.

This note provides background to this discussion, by bringing together a selection of recent analyses and studies by major international think tanks and research institutes on development policy and related issues, with hyperlinks to the texts concerned.

Written by Marcin Grajewski.

• Primary Source

ESO: Background information: State of the Union 2015 http://www.europeansources.info/record/state-of-the-union-2015/

---