European Union

Thus, on 15 Novem­ber 2023, the Euro­pean Union (EU) and its Mem­ber States signed the new part­ner­ship agree­ment with the mem­bers of the Organ­i­sa­tion of African, Caribbean and Pacif­ic States (OACPS), which will now con­sti­tute the over­ar­ch­ing legal frame­work for their rela­tions over the next 20 years. The suc­ces­sor to the Coto­nou Agree­ment, the ​“Samoa Agree­ment” aims to strength­en the capac­i­ty of the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacif­ic (ACP) coun­tries to joint­ly address glob­al chal­lenges togeth­er, by lay­ing down com­mon prin­ci­ples cov­er­ing six pri­or­i­ty areas, notably (i) democ­ra­cy and human rights; (ii) sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and devel­op­ment; (iii) cli­mate change; (iv) human and social devel­op­ment; (v) peace and secu­ri­ty; and (vi) migra­tion and mobility.

The Coun­cil con­tin­ued to fol­low up on the new ​“Neigh­bour­hood, Devel­op­ment and Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Instru­ment — Glob­al Europe” (NDI­CI), which has an over­all finan­cial enve­lope of EUR79.5 bil­lion for the 2021 – 2027 peri­od. Lux­em­bourg argued in favour of main­tain­ing a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the exter­nal bud­get for offi­cial devel­op­ment assis­tance (ODA), and in par­tic­u­lar for the least devel­oped countries.

Out­side the devel­op­ing coun­tries, the EU con­tin­ued to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ukraine. The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has allo­cat­ed EUR785 mil­lion to the financ­ing of human­i­tar­i­an aid pro­grammes in Ukraine. In addi­tion, 98,000 tonnes of in-kind assis­tance, val­ued at more than EUR796 mil­lion, were pro­vid­ed to Ukraine by Mem­ber States and EU part­ners through the EU Civ­il Pro­tec­tion Mech­a­nism. In terms of recon­struc­tion, in June 2023 the Com­mis­sion pro­posed to estab­lish a ​“Facil­i­ty for Ukraine” with a bud­get of EUR50 bil­lion over a four-year peri­od (2024−2027) to sup­port Ukraine’s efforts to main­tain macro-finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, pro­mote recov­ery and modernise.

As a pri­or­i­ty of the Swedish Pres­i­den­cy, the EU Coun­cil adopt­ed con­clu­sions on cor­rup­tion as an obsta­cle to devel­op­ment. The Span­ish Pres­i­den­cy of the Coun­cil of the EU from July to Decem­ber 2023 focused on a just social, eco­log­i­cal and dig­i­tal tran­si­tion, wel­comed by Lux­em­bourg, which stressed in this regard the impor­tance of ODA. In addi­tion, the Coun­cil suc­ceed­ed in adopt­ing con­clu­sions on the ​“Team Europe” approach, where Lux­em­bourg is com­mit­ted to a flex­i­ble and proac­tive appli­ca­tion. The Coun­cil also adopt­ed con­clu­sions on the spe­cial report of the Euro­pean Court of Audi­tors on the Spot­light ini­tia­tive to elim­i­nate vio­lence against women and girls, as well as con­clu­sions on the spe­cial report of the Euro­pean Court of Audi­tors on Pro­gram­ming the Neigh­bour­hood, Devel­op­ment and Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Instru­ment – Glob­al Europe.

The imple­men­ta­tion of the new Glob­al Gate­way devel­op­ment strat­e­gy has also pro­gressed, not least with the pub­li­ca­tion of the first list of flag­ship projects for 2023 in five pri­or­i­ty areas, name­ly trans­port, digi­ti­sa­tion, cli­mate and ener­gy, health and edu­ca­tion and research. Lux­em­bourg has worked through­out the year on strength­en­ing the human devel­op­ment aspect of this new invest­ment strat­e­gy. The Glob­al Gate­way strat­e­gy seeks to go beyond tra­di­tion­al devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion by try­ing to align Euro­pean strate­gic inter­ests with the inter­ests of Europe’s part­ners. Thus, the exter­nal invest­ment strat­e­gy active­ly seeks to do more to incor­po­rate the pri­vate sec­tor, with the aim of broad­en­ing the financ­ing bases of its exter­nal action. To that end, in 2023 the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion cre­at­ed the Glob­al Gate­way Busi­ness Advi­so­ry Board, made up of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Euro­pean pri­vate sec­tor respon­si­ble for advis­ing the Com­mis­sion on strat­e­gy in the imple­men­ta­tion of the Glob­al Gateway.

In Octo­ber 2023, the Com­mis­sion organ­ised the first Glob­al Gate­way Forum at the lev­el of Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment, which was a great suc­cess and demon­strat­ed the inter­est of part­ner coun­tries in part­ner­ing with the EU in the above-men­tioned areas. Lux­em­bourg was rep­re­sent­ed by Xavier Bet­tel, who stressed in his speech the impor­tance of part­ner­ships and fair access to the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. Lux­em­bourg active­ly con­tributes to the imple­men­ta­tion of the Glob­al Gate­way through its par­tic­i­pa­tion in var­i­ous Team Europe ini­tia­tives (TEIs), par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fields of edu­ca­tion and research, while respect­ing the prin­ci­ple of untied aid and ensur­ing that devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion con­tin­ues to be direct­ed toward the most dis­ad­van­taged groups, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the least devel­oped countries.

In the frame­work of the Euro­pean Union – Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) Sum­mit, held from 17 to 18 July in Brus­sels, lead­ers from both com­mu­ni­ties adopt­ed an invest­ment agen­da under the Glob­al Gate­way, iden­ti­fy­ing fair green and dig­i­tal invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.