Europe is the world’s leading provider of official development assistance (ODA). The EU and its member states account for 60% of all development moneys. Africa alone receives roughly US $14 billion a year from its northern neighbours. But is Europe also an agenda setter in the global development arena?
Since the end of the Cold War, rapid progress in commercial technology, along with the War on Terror and international peace enforcing missions, have been driving precision and remote control warfare. But these weapons do not fulfil the promise of...
Europe is the world’s leading provider of official development assistance (ODA). The EU and its member states account for 60% of all development moneys. Africa alone receives roughly US $14 billion a year from its northern neighbours. But is Europ...
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The European Report on Development (ERD) is intended to improve the visibility of the EU at the global level and help it shape the international development agenda. Little of the research done at European institutes reaches international policy di...
In the late 1990s, the development bureaucracy in Brussels was the target of heavy criticism. The different branches of European foreign policy devoted more time to infighting than to finding solutions to the new challenges in the world. Things ar...
Governments and institutes devote immense resources to learning how to avoid a relapse into war in post-conflict situations. But there is only a limited focus on preventing conflict in seemingly stable regions that are actually susceptible to viol...
Politicians are calling for evaluations that measure the effects of development cooperation. However, good development cooperation focuses on long-term processes that cannot be measured in terms of cause and effect. Alternative approaches to evalu...
It was the god Zeus who seduced the beautiful girl Europa. He turned into a virile white bull and took her on his back to Crete. In a similar way, some people are trying to seduce Europe into playing a more positive and proactive role in addressin...
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In the debate on how to combat poverty, policymakers frequently claim that multinational corporations can make a positive contribution by practising corporate social responsibility (CSR). But CSR initiatives are often no match for an issue as comp...
Recently, I was asked to say a few words on Dutch national radio about the global skyrocketing of food prices. Expecting that it would be an ego-boosting experience, I eagerly accepted. However, things did not quite work out as planned. I shocked...
‘The economics profession underwent a revolution in December last year, as economic understanding of the world suddenly shifted’, wrote Branko Milanovic, an economist with the World Bank, last February. This may have seemed like a bit of an exagge...
In Brussels, economist Françoise Moreau heads the DG Development’s unit on ‘forward looking studies and policy coherence’. She is playing a central role in the initiative for the ERD.
Simon Maxwell is the director of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London. He was one of the initiators of the ERD.
The Broker asked Allister McGregor to reflect on the following three questions concerning Europe's role in international development.
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There is no doubt that a lot still needs to be done when to achieve the MDGs (millennium development goals) and other important development goals. There is also no doubt that Europe could play a very important role in this process. However, it is...
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We see two major issues that Europe could and should address as a matter of some urgency: combating European donor proliferation, and harmonizing policy analysis and policy dialogue. Both aspects relate to the Development Assistance Committee (DA...
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The idea of a European Development Report (ERD) is interesting for two reasons. First is that it contributes to making a European language on development a reality (i.e. to facilitate a common language on such issues, which is necessary due to th...
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The broker asked Stephan Klasen to reflect on the following three questions concerning Europe's role in international development.
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The Broker asked Ondrej Horký to reflect on the following three questions concerning Europe's role in internatioanl development.
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The European Report on Development is likely to bring only marginally new perspectives into the field of development, to kill whatever originality European research may have, and to be counterproductive to the attempts to shift the responsibility...
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The Broker asked Francisco Granell to reflect on the following three questions concerning Europe's role in international development.
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