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.

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

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