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The new EU development agenda is an adaptation of an old mismatch in development policy, which is the effort to join, on the one hand, donor-driven demand for good governance and democracy, and on the other hand, a commitment to the ownership of development strategies by the recipient countries. This is an ambiguity because the two approaches oppose each other. We recommend to dissolve this mismatch by promoting a new global partnership with a specific emphasis on ownership. This entails context-sensitive analyses of the political and economic environment of the transition process in partner countries.

This article introduces the special issue on the evolution of European Union development policy, against the background of fundamental challenges that have emerged since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. The special issue's objective is to highlight the complex dynamics of a policy area that is called on to address the massive challenges of poverty, inequality, healthcare capacity, climate change, insecurity and weak governance in countries of the global south, and at the same time support European foreign policy objectives including political stability, migration management, access to resources and markets. In this introductory article, we attempt to sketch the broad outlines of the conceptual and practical dilemmas faced by a policy area that is supposed to be able to fix almost any problem. We observe that European development policy's evolution is driven by the tension between its raison d'etre as a concrete expression of global solidarity and international cooperation, and its increasing instrumentalisation in the service of European economic and security interests. We highlight some of the key challenges that have emerged in the last decade, including rising populist nationalism and Brexit within Europe, the changing nature of relationships between Europe and countries who receive EU aid, and the changing nature of development cooperation itself, exemplified by the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. We outline the specific contributions the articles in this special issue make to research and policy debates on the themes we raise in this introduction. We conclude that the battle between the forces of solidarity and instrumentality has evolved EU development policy into an impossibly complex arena of competing norms, practices and institutions, which raises many open questions for future research.

This paper looks into the issue of how European Union (EU) development policy can respond to a changing development landscape that is characterised by a different geography of power and wealth and a changing geography of global poverty. The question of how to differentiate its partnerships and how to best engage with middle-income countries (MICs) has been among the most discussed issues in the ongoing process of modernising EU development policy. The analysis in this paper puts the question of aid to MICs in the context of two interlinked challenges: (i) the need to reconceptualise dominant approaches to global poverty reduction that prioritise national income as a key guiding criterion to classify countries, and (ii) the growing range of global challenges that require development policy to diversify its objectives. With regards to the implications for EU development policy, the paper draws two main conclusions. First, tackling global poverty needs a better coordinated cross-country division of labour at the EU level to avoid marginalising countries that have become wealthier in per capita terms but that continue to experience internal development challenges. Second, addressing challenges related to complex global public goods requires EU development policy to continue its engagement with emerging economies and other increasingly powerful developing countries. Such diversification of objectives, however, will increase the coordination challenges of EU development policy and other European external policies substantially.

The central aim of this book is to define the approach of EU development policy regarding Africa since the end of the Cold War. It focuses on the impact of EU development policy on the domain of international development and the objective of the EU to become a prominent international actor. The book relies on Martha Finnemore's Social Constructivist research. It concentrates on the dynamics maintained by the EU with the normative basis that characterises the structure and agents of internati.

The need to better adapt EU development policy to the varying levels of development of partner countries ("differentiation") and the extent to which middle-income countries (MICs) should continue to receive EU aid have become contentious issues of the EU's new development policy agenda as well as in the negotiations on the next multi-annual financial framework. Due to the EU's mandate to ensure its global presence in all developing countries, development cooperation with MICs is more a question of how such cooperation should be framed rather than withdrawing from these countries. The Commission's proposal foresees ending bilateral aid allocations to 19 developing countries but continuing cooperation under thematic and regional programmes. Ongoing discussions between the Commission, Member States and the European Parliament have so far focussed mainly on the "right" criteria for such graduation and the extent to which specific countries should be exempt from the rule. So far, the EU has not presented a clear strategy of how exactly it aims to change its development programmes with this group of advanced developing countries, and has thus created some ambiguity on the actual implications of a differentiated approach. What are the strategic priorities and policy objectives of these new forms of cooperation? Will the EU continue to focus on poverty reduction or will the cooperation objectives shift to addressing regional and global development challenges? The debate on differentiation needs to be placed in the context of two interlinked challenges – both being of fundamental importance for the future direction of EU development policy: the phenomenon of continued poverty and rising inequality in countries that have generated fast economic growth; and the growing range of global challenges and the strategically important role of many MICs in securing global commons. With regards to the implications for EU developmentpolicy, there are two main conclusions: Tackling global poverty needs both better "technical" solutions for classifying countries and, on the political level, a better coordinated cross-country division of labour and joint EU strategy towards advanced developing countries; The EU needs to address the mismatch between partner country portfolio and development objectives. Due to its global presence, the EU is ideally placed to adopt a global rationale of development policy, in particular in its cooperation with MICs. This global outlook on development will increase the coordination challenges of EU development policy and other European external policies substantially. The EU's instrument framework – and in particular the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI) – needs to be designed to allow for the continued funding of poverty reduction and social cohesion programmes in graduating countries. At the same time, it should make sufficient resources for the proposed "Global Public Goods" programme available to demonstrate a clear shift towards a global rationale of development policy.

This article reviews the current state of the EU's development policy reform agenda. It suggests that the extension of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) to this area of EU activity would offer significant advantages. It reviews the EU's experience with the OMC, identifies the strengths and weaknesses of this process and examines how it might relate to the current formulation and implementation of development policy.