EUROPEAN UNION

With­in the Africa, Caribbean and Pacif­ic (ACP) work­ing group of the Euro­pean Coun­cil, nego­ti­a­tions for the agree­ment that is to suc­ceed the Coto­nou agree­ment con­tin­ued. The Coto­nou agree­ment, whose aim was to re-estab­lish macro-eco­nom­ic bal­ances, devel­op the pri­vate sec­tor, improve social ser­vices, pro­mote region­al inte­gra­tion, pro­mote equal oppor­tu­ni­ties for men and women, pro­tect the envi­ron­ment and remove bar­ri­ers to trade pro­gres­sive­ly and rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly, was signed in 2000 by the EU and its Mem­ber States and 79 coun­tries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacif­ic for a peri­od of 20 years. Nego­ti­a­tions for a suc­ces­sor agree­ment (Post-Coto­nou agree­ment) began in Sep­tem­ber 2018. Because of delays, the cur­rent agree­ment has had to be extend­ed until 30 Novem­ber 2020 and tran­si­tion­al mea­sures have been put in place to avoid a legal vac­u­um pend­ing the sign­ing of the Post-Coto­nou agree­ment, expect­ed to take place by the end of Octo­ber 2021. The chief nego­tia­tors reached a polit­i­cal agree­ment on 3 Decem­ber 2020 regard­ing the suc­ces­sor treaty. Dur­ing the nego­ti­a­tions, Lux­em­bourg reg­u­lar­ly inter­vened in favour of pro­gres­sive posi­tions on issues linked to migra­tion and gen­der equal­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to sex­u­al and repro­duc­tive health and rights.

With­in the Euro­pean Council’s ad-hoc work­ing group on the Mul­ti­an­nu­al Finan­cial Frame­work — Neigh­bour­hood Devel­op­ment and Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Instru­ment (MFF-NDI­CI), nego­ti­a­tions con­tin­ued on the new financ­ing instru­ment for the EU’s exter­nal action, the NDI­CI, which began in 2018. This instrument’s aim is to bring togeth­er most of the Euro­pean Union’s cur­rent exter­nal action instru­ments with­in a sin­gle instru­ment in order to increase the con­sis­ten­cy of poli­cies, syn­er­gies and the flex­i­bil­i­ty of its inter­ven­tions. This will cov­er approx­i­mate­ly three quar­ters of the EU’s exter­nal financ­ing. Nego­ti­a­tions in a tri­logue for­mat result­ed, in mid-Decem­ber 2020, in an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple on the new NDI­CI. With an over­all enve­lope of EUR79.5 bil­lion (in 2018 prices), the new instru­ment will cov­er the EU’s devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion with all third coun­tries, thus going beyond the geo­graph­i­cal scope of the ACP coun­tries. In con­trast to the Euro­pean Devel­op­ment Fund, which was direct­ly financed by the EU Mem­ber States, the NDI­CI will be financed by the EU bud­get and will there­fore be sub­ject to the Euro­pean Parliament’s bud­getary scrutiny.

Dis­cus­sions with­in the CODEV work­ing group on the new finan­cial archi­tec­ture for devel­op­ment were held in par­al­lel and close­ly in step with the nego­ti­a­tions on the NDICI.

Anoth­er key sub­ject on the agen­da of the Euro­pean Council’s CODEV work­ing group was the Team Europe approach, which is the Euro­pean frame­work for the exter­nal response to the COVID-19 cri­sis, in order to address the imme­di­ate health cri­sis and human­i­tar­i­an needs in the part­ner coun­tries. This con­cept was sub­se­quent­ly extend­ed to address, in addi­tion, the more long-term struc­tur­al impact on these coun­tries’ soci­eties and economies, extend­ing to the ori­en­ta­tion of the EU’s mul­ti­an­nu­al pro­grammes with its part­ner countries.

Since it was launched in April 2020, Team Europe has mobilised EUR38.5 bil­lion. In 2020, Lux­em­bourg, which aligned itself with this com­mon EU approach, con­tributed EUR68.88 mil­lion to the COVID-19 response. The polit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties are: 1. emer­gency aid and human­i­tar­i­an aid; 2. sup­port for basic health, water and san­i­ta­tion and nutri­tion sys­tems; 3. sup­port for the socio-eco­nom­ic recov­ery. The val­ues guid­ing the approach are Euro­pean sol­i­dar­i­ty with the part­ner coun­tries and Europe’s deter­mi­na­tion to show glob­al lead­er­ship for a sus­tain­able recov­ery. The themes of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion are appar­ent in the links with the Green Deal, the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) and the prin­ci­ple of Build Back Bet­ter and Green­er. In gen­er­al, Lux­em­bourg has aligned itself with this approach and wel­comes the new dynam­ic it cre­ates for joint pro­gram­ming but also on the polit­i­cal lev­el, in terms of the Euro­pean Union’s role on the world stage. Thus, we note a favourable dynam­ic for the joint pro­gram­ming exer­cis­es in the field which began in autumn 2020. In this con­text, it should be not­ed that the Team Europe Ini­tia­tives, which are a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Team Europe approach in the EU’s mul­ti­an­nu­al coop­er­a­tion pro­grammes with its part­ner coun­tries, will be at the heart of pro­gram­ming for future years and will also be cou­pled to the NDI­CI, which will become oper­a­tional in the next mul­ti­an­nu­al finan­cial framework.

In the con­text of the response to the COVID-19 cri­sis, it can be seen that Lux­em­bourg has made a com­mit­ment to sup­port the Euro­pean Commission’s COV­AX glob­al mech­a­nism to address the cur­rent alarm­ing needs and in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ple of ensur­ing fair access to safe and effec­tive vac­cines for all. Devel­oped in April 2020 in part­ner­ship with the Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness Inno­va­tions (CEPI) and the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO), it is led by the Gavi vac­cine alliance and the vac­cines pil­lar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accel­er­a­tor. In order to ensure fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of the vac­cines and the prin­ci­ple of leav­ing no one behind, Lux­em­bourg has com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the COV­AX mech­a­nism with the amount of EUR1 mil­lion. The Team Europe team is the largest donor, giv­ing EUR853 million.

While Lux­em­bourg has for many years mobilised new tech­nolo­gies and inno­v­a­tive solu­tions as levers in its devel­op­ment and human­i­tar­i­an action inter­ven­tions, the sub­ject has tak­en on a new impe­tus in recent years in the Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion agen­da. The Dig­i­tal for Devel­op­ment (D4D) con­cept seeks to pro­mote the inte­gra­tion and cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of dig­i­tal tools by devel­op­ment assis­tance and human­i­tar­i­an action oper­a­tors, both in regard to basic social ser­vices, major inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ment projects such as e‑administration or as a tool for the for­mal­i­sa­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of devel­op­ment poli­cies. Africa is at the heart of these devel­op­ments and it is wide­ly recog­nised that ICTs will play a key role for its peo­ples at a deci­sive time for tech­no­log­i­cal gov­er­nance, a turn­ing point ren­dered all the more urgent by the cur­rent COVID-19 pandemic.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has thus made Dig­i­tal 4 Devel­op­ment a vital pri­or­i­ty for inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships in the years ahead. It aims to make Europe a world leader in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, work­ing towards a fair and com­pet­i­tive dig­i­tal econ­o­my that puts peo­ple and the prin­ci­ples of human rights at the heart of its actions. With­in this per­spec­tive and the ini­tia­tive of five Mem­ber States (Bel­gium, Esto­nia, France, Ger­many and Lux­em­bourg), the com­mu­ni­ca­tion enti­tled ​‘Shap­ing Europe’s dig­i­tal future’, pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2020, estab­lished the D4D Hub as a flag­ship plat­form for dig­i­tal coop­er­a­tion that will make it pos­si­ble to build and con­sol­i­date an EU-wide approach pro­mot­ing the latter’s val­ue and mobil­is­ing its Mem­ber States and its busi­ness­es, civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, finan­cial estab­lish­ments, know-how and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. In this con­text, three flag­ship dig­i­tal pro­grammes were launched under the Ger­man pres­i­den­cy of the Euro­pean Coun­cil on 8 Decem­ber 2020, includ­ing the Glob­al and the African D4D Hub, the EU-AU Data Flag­ship and the African Euro­pean Dig­i­tal Inno­va­tion Bridge. The Africa-Europe D4D Hub project will be imple­ment­ed by a con­sor­tium made up of five Euro­pean agen­cies, includ­ing LuxDev.