Perspectives on transatlantic cooperation: Development – Addressing global poverty and insecurity through better transatlantic cooperation

This briefing forms part of a broader research project on the perspectives on transatlantic cooperation in the US election year, requested by the Chair of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with the United States.
Aid coordination, part of the Paris Agenda on aid effectiveness, has shown itself to be extremely challenging, with only modest and erratic progress made so far. Despite foreseeable difficulties in its implementation, however, closer transatlantic cooperation on aid coordination would boost the global aid-effectiveness agenda, and make more plausible the achievement of the ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Based on common fundamental values and shared strategic interests, the EU and US are together responsible for over three quarters of global aid, and have the potential to increase their cooperation in areas such as the security-development nexus, the integration of emerging donors, finding a better balance between short-term crisis response and a longer-term development perspective, and creating a common framework for public-private cooperation for development.

Building on the existing EU-US development dialogue, partners could intensify mutual learning and improved information-sharing in those areas, and engage in high level dialogue on the division of labour in order to enhance political support for field-based cooperation.

A US-EU inter-agency steering mechanism could help to harmonise reporting requirements and the conditions placed on partner governments and programmes, and facilitate more shared analysis, missions and practical cooperation on the ground.

Author: Marta Latek.