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The Netherlands: a Bleak Perspective for Development Cooperation

By Lau Schulpen / Part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series

June 2024 is more than six months since the last general elections were held. Elections in which the radical right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders emerged as the biggest with 37 seats of the 150 in the Dutch lower house. It took the full six months for the PVV and three other right-wing parties to form a coalition government, meaning the Netherlands will have the most right-leaning government they ever had. For those still trying to cope with the blow of the PVV victory six months ago, and certainly for those who care about the world outside of the Netherlands, the new cabinet will have little to offer.

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Aid Business as Usual? How Austria’s Development Cooperation has, so far, Dodged the Populist Bullet

By Lukas Schlögl / Part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series

Austria plays an unassuming midfield position in international development cooperation: stable institutions, a stagnant budget, incremental policy change and a multilateralist orientation. Taking a step back, such ‘aid business as usual’ is surprising. Why, despite tumultuous domestic political change and a strong political influence of right-wing populism, has Austria’s development cooperation remained shielded from politicisation? And: will this last?

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Imagining Global Development Policy after 2030: What is the EU’s Role and How Will it Sit with Competing Geo-Political Paradigms?

By Andy Sumner and Stephan Klingebiel / Part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series

The EU has been particularly important in championing Agenda 2030 and keeping the SDGs on the global development policy agenda. What should happen after the deadline passes?

Development won’t end in 2030. Even if – what is extremely unlikely – the headline SDGs were met, at least a billion people would live just above extreme poverty. What are the options for a unifying framework after 2030, and what should the EU’s role be amid competing geo-political paradigms on global development.

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Seven principles for making development policy fit for the 21st century

By Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Imme Scholz

The political and economic environment in which development policy operates has undergone radical changes since the emergence of this policy field in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, newly independent nation states made their first steps in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many of them are now politically and economically established states.  According to the World Bank classification the number of middle-income countries now exceeds the number of low-income countries. Continue reading “Seven principles for making development policy fit for the 21st century”