EU policy coherence for development

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a significant development actor, both in its own right and in its capacity as coordinator of the European development policy. Prompted by the need to improve the efficiency and legitimacy of development assistance, the EU has supported international efforts to establish global principles of policy coherence. In this policy brief Anna Michalski explores the origins and development of the EU’s ambition to promote policy coherence in European development policy. The findings are based on a report, "The EU and Global Development Policy in Challenging Times", published in 2020 by the Swedish Institute for International Affairs.

Some overall conclusions and recommendations

In practice it has proven difficult for the EU to improve the coherence of its development assistance.
Some of these difficulties are internal and inherent to the concept of policy coherence as a governance tool, but others are due to the multiplication of the underlying rationales for the policies that the EU is pursuing abroad.
To improve its efficiency and relevance as a development actor, the EU should endeavor to:
- make clear the justifications that underlie policy coherence for development, including the reasoning behind trade-offs and prioritizations;
- set up a permanent organ with the task to assess the EU’s and the member states’ fulfilment of the objectives of cooperation, coherence and complementarity, and improve existing tools for policy coherence.

About the author

Anna Michalski is Associate Professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, and associated senior researcher at the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, Europe Programme.

The Delmi Policy Brief 2021:12 is launched on November 16, 2021.

Picture by André Grunden from Pixabay.

The evolving policy coherence for development. Risk or opportunity for the EU as a development actor?

Some overall conclusions and recommendations

About the author

Download the Policy Brief

Read the Ui Report that the Policy Brief is based on