The EUEuropean Union and the Poor: Unfinished business ODIOverseas Development Institute (London) Opinion 16, May 2004

'The fate of the European constitution looks likely to dominate debate in Europe over coming months. In international development, however, other issues matter more. There is much unfinished business Romano Prodi will leave behind.

It is important to say that EUEuropean Union development cooperation improved when the Prodi Commission came to office in 1999. It needed to. A series of critical evaluations in the mid-1990s had revealed incoherent leadership, poor policy and often dreadful implementation. The new Commission shuffled the portfolios. It wrote a new policy emphasising poverty reduction. It created a single implementing agency, EuropeAid. And it passed responsibility for many decisions down to local field offices. The EUEuropean Union also signed up to the Doha development round on trade, and made the right noises about ‘coherence’, especially reform of the Common Agricultural Policy................ (see link in title for full article)