Challenges such as economic and social exclusion, state fragility and environmental degradation – in particular climate change – have become more salient on the global agenda. This is aptly illustrated by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With the SDGs, the global development agenda has broadened its initial focus on economic development and humanitarian aid and become a comprehensive framework for global cooperation. The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs have made clear that global development challenges require collective action if they are to be resolved, at domestic level and with regard to foreign policies by all countries.

Meanwhile, a series of crises inside Europe (the Euro, Brexit and migration, to name just three) have weakened European solidarity and the EU’s potential to pursue ambitious international agendas. But the world does not sit still, of course.  The growing influence of rising powers – especially China, India and Brazil – in global affairs has arguably reduced the relative importance of European aid as an instrument for supporting development, and as a lever of influence.

The implications of these challenges for European development cooperation are explored in a new special issue of Development Policy Review, available online.

Contributions to the special issue explore the ways in which the EU approaches collective action challenges in different development cooperation frameworks and policy settings. Themes explored include strategies for overcoming collective action problems, the impacts of these interactions on EU and member state aid policies, coherence between development and other policy fields, relations between European and other development actors, and the reception of the EU’s efforts in developing countries.

This launch event provided an opportunity to discuss these issues with researchers who contributed to the Special Issue and, in a round table debate, with an expert panel of policymakers and scholars.

Programme
Special Issue Launch (15:00-17.30h)

Welcome

• Christine Hackenesch, EU Project Leader, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn

Introduction
EU Collective Action amid Global Transformation and Domestic Crisis

• Mark Furness, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn

Acting Collectively: EU Development Cooperation and Global Challenges

Make Europe happen on the ground? Enabling and constraining factors for EU aid coordination in Africa

• Maurizio Carbone, University of Glasgow

The rise and demise of European budget support: political economy of collective European Union donor action

• Nadia Molenaers, University of Antwerp

The European Union as a Collective Actor: Aid and Trade in African Public Opinion

• Thilo Bodenstein, Central European University, Budapest

The Normative Distinctiveness of the European Union in International Development: Stepping Out of the Shadow of the World Bank?

• Fabienne Bossuyt / Joren Verschaeve, University of Ghent

Open Discussion

Moderator

• Christine Hackenesch

Short break with Canapés

Round Table Debate (18:00-20:00h)

Welcome

• Tanja Baerman, International Affairs, State Chancellery of North-Rhine Westphalia, Düsseldorf

Moderator

• Simon Maxwell, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London; European Think Tanks Group Chair

Panelists

• Nils Behrndt, Head of Cabinet, European Development Commissioner
• Judith Sargentini, Member of the European Parliament
• Imme Scholz, Deputy Director, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)
• Jörg Faust, Director, German Institute for Development Evaluation