Interministerial Committee for Development Cooperation

The Law of 9 May 2012 amend­ing the amend­ed law of 6 Jan­u­ary 1996 on devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion and human­i­tar­i­an action defines the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the Inter­min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion (ICDC). It has the remit of giv­ing its opin­ion on the broad out­lines of devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion pol­i­cy and the coher­ence of devel­op­ment poli­cies (Arti­cle 50). The law also asks the gov­ern­ment to sub­mit an annu­al report to the Cham­ber of Deputies on the work of the Com­mit­tee, includ­ing the issue of the coher­ence of devel­op­ment poli­cies (Arti­cle 6). The Grand Ducal Reg­u­la­tion of 7 August 2012 lays down the make-up and mode of oper­a­tion of the Inter­min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee for Devel­op­ment Cooperation.

In 2022, the ICDC met five times under the chair­man­ship of the Direc­tor for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs. In addi­tion to the rou­tine updat­ing on the flag­ship activ­i­ties of the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion at each meet­ing, includ­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, the reori­en­ta­tions of projects and pro­grammes as a result of the pan­dem­ic, the work of the ICDC placed spe­cial empha­sis on pol­i­cy coherence.

One of the first meet­ings of the ICDC pre­sent­ed the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s sup­port to Ukraine, either through finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions or con­tri­bu­tions in kind through emer​gency​.lu. In addi­tion, there are the high­er edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives for Ukrain­ian stu­dents and ini­tia­tives by the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank in favour of Ukraine.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the NGDOs’ Cer­cle were invit­ed to the ICDC’s meet­ings for all dis­cus­sions on pol­i­cy coher­ence, and one of the meet­ings was facil­i­tat­ed by the Cer­cle. This was held in Octo­ber with a pre­sen­ta­tion (in Eng­lish) by CON­CORD of the report ​“A test of the EU’s integri­ty towards the 2030 Agen­da: the sta­tus of pol­i­cy coher­ence for sus­tain­able development”.

As in the pre­vi­ous year, a joint meet­ing between the ICDC and the Inter­de­part­men­tal Com­mis­sion on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (ICSD) was held. The joint ses­sion was facil­i­tat­ed by two experts from the OECD who pre­sent­ed the ​“Pol­i­cy coher­ence on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in Lux­em­bourg” project. Over a 24-month peri­od this project will make it pos­si­ble to work on the fol­low­ing aims: (a) strength­en­ing Lux­em­bourg gov­ern­ment capac­i­ties to iden­ti­fy syn­er­gies, man­age pol­i­cy trade-offs and avoid neg­a­tive spillovers when imple­ment­ing the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals (SDGs); and (b) improv­ing under­stand­ing among pol­i­cy mak­ers and key stake­hold­ers on how to apply pol­i­cy coher­ence and inte­grat­ed pol­i­cy-mak­ing in prac­tice to achieve the SDGs in Lux­em­bourg and abroad. Due to diary clash­es, the results of this work­shop will not be pre­sent­ed until 31 Jan­u­ary 2023, at the first joint meet­ing of the ICDC and the ICSD.

One of the meet­ings was ded­i­cat­ed to the D4D Hub, with a pre­sen­ta­tion of the Euro­pean Cen­ter for Devel­op­ment Pol­i­cy Man­age­ment (ECDPM). The pre­sen­ta­tion includ­ed the Euro­pean Commission’s invest­ment strat­e­gy for con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the broad sense, which is described by some as a Euro­pean response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The pre­sen­ta­tion also addressed the ques­tion of the link between the Glob­al Gate­way and the D4D Hub, in terms of the role that the plat­form could play in the imple­men­ta­tion of the ambi­tious Glob­al Gate­way strategy.

Final­ly, it should be not­ed that the meet­ing of 8 July 2022 was the last meet­ing chaired by Manuel Ton­nar, who left office as Pres­i­dent of the ICDC on 1 Sep­tem­ber. Manuel Ton­nar was replaced in the post by Christophe Schiltz.