As development cooperation is being questioned and reshaped along geostrategic lines in a rapidly evolving global order, this event brings together the people who study it, the people who fund and design it, and the people who deliver it on the ground. It is built around a simple conviction: a stronger European role in the world and a more genuine partnership with the Global South depend on tighter connections between research, policy-making and practice — the same logic that underpins the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs' "diamond" model of collaboration between government, knowledge institutions, civil society and the private sector.

The event doubles as a moment of celebration and reflection: it marks ECDPM's 40th anniversary and unites a coalition of Maastricht-based and European knowledge institutions — ECDPM, the European Think Tank Group (ETTG), the Maastricht University, including the Maastricht School of Management (MSM), and UNU-MERIT — to take stock of what their complementary expertise has contributed to Europe's global engagement, and where it needs to go next.

The afternoon's discussions move from the substance to the strategy: taking stock of the depth of Dutch and European engagement with the Global South, examining the resources, instruments and institutional muscle the EU can mobilise to back its global ambitions, and closing with senior policymakers from the Netherlands, the European Commission and EU member states debating how to reinvent development cooperation for a world in crisis. Threaded through all of it is the same emphasis on partnership — between disciplines, between institutions, and between the Netherlands and the EU as they chart their role in international cooperation together.

Agenda

Full agenda will follow shortly