Development ministers from the European Union’s member states will gather in Brussels next Thursday (12 December) to push forward discussion about the international development agenda after 2015.

The European Union and its member states are the world’s largest providers of development aid, and their thinking is likely to have a significant impact on the framework that the United Nations will adopt for 2015 to 2030. The current framework – the Millennium Development Goals, agreed in 2000 – set specific targets to reduce poverty and under-development by 2015 in areas including child mortality, hunger, disease, sanitation and education.

The overarching theme of post-2015 international development policy is likely to be sustainability. The EU envisages anchoring policies on improved living standards and greener economic development models.

It favours the retention of specific goals to eradicate poverty, but it is also urging attention to broader issues such as governance and security. An earlier ministerial debate on development, in June, underlined the “impossibility of achieving sustainable development in contexts of fragility, violence and armed conflict.”

The same focus on a comprehensive approach to development is evident in another issue on the ministers’ agenda: discussion of a 205-page report published by the European Commission on 4 November on ‘policy coherence in development’.

This approach – now widely pursued in the international development community – aims to ensure that no policy undermines development goals and that policymakers consider development ambitions when pursuing other policy objectives. A reduction in the EU’s aid spending in 2014-20 is adding to the pressure to ensure policies are mutually reinforcing.

Value

Recent research from the European Centre for Development Policy Management, a think-tank based in Maastricht, suggests that national governments understand the value of policy coherence but are investing little to promote it.

Critics have argued that recent reforms of the EU’s common agricultural policy largely ignored the impact on the developing world, and those criticisms were aired again at a meeting this week (3-6 December) of trade ministers organised by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Questions about the development dimension of EU trade policies are likely to become more acute as the EU makes a renewed bid next year to conclude regional trade agreements in Africa and continues to pursue bilateral deals in Asia.