Reforming European Development Cooperation: What do the practitioners think?

Reforming the European Community’s (EC) external aid is crucial for improving the quality and effectiveness of European development cooperation. Many actors involved in cooperation have expressed their willingness to engage in a dialogue on such a reform in a constructive spirit. However, the intra-European institutional setting, based in Brussels, makes it difficult to engage in a genuine dialogue with multiple voices.

In this context, the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), together with the EU-ACP Forum, the Foundation for the Progress of Humankind (FPH), OneWorld and Euforic, organised an electronic forum on the EC reform from 8 September to 3 November 2000. Although the forum constituted the third stage of the debate on the EU-ACP forum, [2] it nevertheless included participants from geographic regions all over the world (i.e. Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, Latin America, Asia and the countries of the former Soviet Union). See Annex I for further information on the methodology used.