EUROPEAN UNION

Under the Roman­ian Pres­i­den­cy, Lux­em­bourg took part in the For­eign Affairs Coun­cil meet­ing in its devel­op­ment con­fig­u­ra­tion in Brus­sels on 16 May 2019. Under the Finnish Pres­i­den­cy, Lux­em­bourg took part in the For­eign Affairs Coun­cil meet­ing in its devel­op­ment con­fig­u­ra­tion in Brus­sels on 25 Novem­ber 2019.

Dur­ing 2019, the Coun­cil, in its devel­op­ment con­fig­u­ra­tion, addressed the fol­low­ing major issues:

Nego­ti­a­tions on a post-Coto­nou agree­ment between the EU and the APC countries

the Coto­nou agree­ment, dat­ing from 2000 (it entered into force in 2003 and was sub­se­quent­ly amend­ed in 2005 and 2010 respec­tive­ly) links the EU and its Mem­ber States to 79ACP coun­tries (more than half the Mem­ber States of the UN) through a legal­ly bind­ing inter­na­tion­al agree­ment. The agree­ment has three dif­fer­ent strands, name­ly (i) devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion (where activ­i­ties are financed through the Euro­pean Devel­op­ment Fund — EDF); (ii) eco­nom­ic and trade rela­tions (gov­erned main­ly by eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship agree­ments — EPAs); and (iii) the polit­i­cal strand (in par­tic­u­lar, polit­i­cal dia­logue, migra­tion, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of impos­ing sanc­tions in the event of fail­ure to com­ply with the com­mit­ments made). Since the Coto­nou agree­ment was to expire on 29 Feb­ru­ary 2020, in Sep­tem­ber 2018 the EU and the ACP embarked on nego­ti­a­tions to con­clude a suc­ces­sor agreement.

An ini­tial round of nego­ti­a­tions estab­lished the over­all struc­ture of the new agree­ment, name­ly a foun­da­tion set­ting out the exist­ing ele­ments of Coto­nou, as well as three region­al pro­to­cols. Thus, the link between the Coto­nou agree­ment and the eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship agree­ments (EPAs) will be main­tained. Although the gov­ern­ments will be the main play­ers in the future part­ner­ship, the nego­ti­a­tions con­firmed the need for dia­logue with all the oth­er stake­hold­ers involved, in par­tic­u­lar par­lia­ments, civ­il soci­ety and the pri­vate sec­tor. The future agree­ment should cov­er pri­or­i­ty areas such as the rule of law, democ­ra­cy, good gov­er­nance, human rights, job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic growth, invest­ment, cli­mate change, com­bat­ing pover­ty, peace and secu­ri­ty and migra­tion and mobility.

A sec­ond round of nego­ti­a­tions began on 25 Jan­u­ary 2019, focus­ing on the con­tent of the foun­da­tion and on the insti­tu­tion­al ele­ments of the future part­ner­ship. In addi­tion, high-lev­el dia­logue iden­ti­fied the pri­or­i­ties for each of the three ACP sub-regions, so that nego­ti­a­tions on the region­al pil­lars offi­cial­ly opened on 4 April 2019. It should be not­ed that nego­ti­a­tions are being con­duct­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and the ACP group, and that for the EU the Mem­ber States are kept reg­u­lar­ly informed and con­sult­ed about developments

As the nego­ti­a­tions for a post-Coto­nou agree­ment have tak­en longer than ini­tial­ly planned, some tran­si­tion­al mea­sures have been adopt­ed so that the pro­vi­sions of the Coto­nou agree­ment will remain in force until either (i) 31 Decem­ber 2020, or (ii) the entry into force, or the pro­vi­sion­al appli­ca­tion, of the post-Coto­nou agreement.

The EU’s new exter­nal action instru­ment ‑ndi­ci (Neigh­bour­hood, Devel­op­ment and Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Instrument)

With a view to the Union’s next mul­ti­an­nu­al finan­cial frame­work (MFF), cov­er­ing the peri­od 2021 to 2027, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion pro­posed in 2018 to cre­ate an instru­ment that will incor­po­rate var­i­ous cur­rent instru­ments, such as the Euro­pean Devel­op­ment Fund, the Euro­pean Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion Instru­ment, the Euro­pean Neigh­bour­hood Instru­ment, the Instru­ment for Democ­ra­cy and Human Rights, the Instru­ment for Sta­bil­i­ty and Peace, the Part­ner­ship Instru­ment and the Euro­pean Fund for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, among oth­ers, to sim­pli­fy the cur­rent archi­tec­ture, increase trans­paren­cy and increase the Commission’s flexibility.

An ad-hoc work­ing group of the Coun­cil of the EU has been work­ing since autumn 2018 on the draft NDI­CI reg­u­la­tion. A par­tial man­date has emerged from the work of the Aus­tri­an, Roman­ian and Finnish Pres­i­den­cies, and it was on the basis of this par­tial man­date that the Finnish Pres­i­den­cy opened the tri­logue with the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment on 23 Octo­ber 2019. 

In Decem­ber 2019, the Finnish Pres­i­den­cy unveiled a first cost­ed pro­pos­al for the EU bud­get for the 2021 to 2027 period.

Inno­va­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion in devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion and human­i­tar­i­an action

on 20 Novem­ber 2017 the Coun­cil adopt­ed con­clu­sions on Dig­i­tal for Devel­op­ment, reaf­firm­ing that the EU and its Mem­ber States are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and ser­vices in devel­op­ing coun­tries as pow­er­ful enablers of inclu­sive growth and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. While Lux­em­bourg has for many years mobilised new tech­nolo­gies and inno­v­a­tive solu­tions as levers in its coop­er­a­tion and human­i­tar­i­an action inter­ven­tions, the sub­ject has tak­en on a new impe­tus in recent years in the Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion agen­da. Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s new gen­er­al strat­e­gy, adopt­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2018, places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the use of ICT (and data) for development.

In this con­text, the Lux­em­bourg Gov­ern­ment co-signed a let­ter to HR/VP Mogheri­ni and Com­mis­sion­er Mim­ica in May 2019, with the aim of stress­ing the impor­tance giv­en to Digital4Development (D4D) ini­tia­tives in the frame­work of EU devel­op­ment pol­i­cy and, in par­tic­u­lar, the new mul­ti­an­nu­al finan­cial frame­work (2021−2027). In order to cap­i­talise on the most impor­tant lessons learned by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the imple­men­ta­tion of ICT pro­grammes, in Decem­ber 2019 Lux­em­bourg for­mal­ly adhered to the ​‘9 Prin­ci­ples for Dig­i­tal Devel­op­ment’. These prin­ci­ples emerged from a con­cert­ed dia­logue among sev­er­al devel­op­ment actors and were adopt­ed in 2014 (notably by the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the Dig­i­tal Impact Alliance, the Inter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, Oxfam, UK Aid, USAID, the World Bank, and sev­er­al spe­cialised Unit­ed Nations agencies).