Policy Coherence for Development in the European Union: Do New Procedures Unblock or Simply Reproduce Old Disagreements?

Abstract

Policy coherence for development (PCD) — the integration of the needs of developing countries into all policy areas — is now an EU policy goal. This article focuses on how far this ambitious goal has been addressed in a policy procedure — impact assessment (IA) — established to support such cross-cutting goals. Drawing on an analysis of the 2006 and 2013 reforms of the EU’s sugar policy, it finds that while IA offered a new venue in which to debate PCD, in practice it reproduced the same disagreements that previously frustrated agricultural reform. The article shows how IA was shaped during its implementation, so instead of functioning as a bureaucratic procedure to pursue policy coherence, it simply buttressed the power of dominant groups. Advocates of policy coherence in general and PCD in particular should therefore be mindful that the toolbox of implementing instruments in the EU may be more limited than sometimes assumed.

Key Words:

• Policy coherence for development
• impact assessment
• policy coordination
• bureaucratic procedures

Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to John Turnpenny and two referees for their comments on an early version of this article. Financial support was provided by the Linking Impact Assessment Instruments with Sustainability Expertise (LIAISE) Network of Excellence financed under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (Project Number 243826). In addition, Camilla Adelle gratefully acknowledges the support of a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Andrew Jordan gratefully acknowledges the support of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (F00204AR).

Notes

1. Certain ACP countries are also LDCs, and so qualified for duty-free entry of sugar imports into the EU under the EBA agreement. In addition, since 2009 the original arrangements for EU market access for ACP countries — the Sugar Protocol — has been replaced by new arrangements under interim Economic Partnership Agreements. These arrangements are being implemented in stages with duty-free and quota free sugar imports to the EU from these countries by October 2015.

2. For an explanation of the endogenous and exogenous pressures which eventually placed reform of the EU’s sugar regime on the political agenda in the early millennium see Ackrill and Kay (2011).

3. The case focused on the export subsidies, which Australia, Brazil and Thailand argued were beyond the EU’s Uruguay Round commitments. The WTO’s decision was upheld on appeal in April 2005.

4. It was agreed for the allocation of funds for the remaining seven years of the measures to be covered by the Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation Instrument in the next Financial Perspective (2007–2013).

5. This was the first CAP reform since the Lisbon Treaty gave co-decision powers over the CAP to the European Parliament.