The EU has played a key role within the post-WWII international liberal order, as a global economic and normative power. In this context it contributed to shaping the global development cooperation architecture as we know it today, including as the main provider of Official Development Assistance (ODA). However, some of the pillars on which that order rested are changing: multilateralism and the legitimacy of the current global governance architecture are being questioned, several EU member states are rolling back their ODA budgets and furthering more instrumentalised and investment-based narrative of international cooperation. This in turn prompts the EU to rethink both its development cooperation model and more generally its role in the upcoming, still undefined, global order.

These reflections might have been kept somewhat separate in the past, when development policy was managed and practiced in relative isolation to other public policies in many countries. However, now countries in the so–called Global South – including the traditional ‘beneficiaries’ of development cooperation – demand abandoning vertical, neo-colonial dynamics and adopting broader, more genuine partnership-based ways of working; development challenges are by nature inseparable from other global agendas such as climate change or economic security; and the EU’s own cooperation instruments now explicitly merge development goals with political, economic and security concerns.

The goal of this panel is therefore to gather academic and evidence-based ideas on how the EU can build sound and valuable international partnerships while simultaneously navigating budget constraints, internal political reluctances, transactional relations and legitimate decolonial demands. In other words, how it can effectively put its vast experience, expertise and (financial and non-financial) resources at the service of global development, both politically and technically. This includes past experience as well as ongoing and future instruments and efforts, including Global Gateway, Team Europe, and the ongoing Multiannual Financial Framework (2028-2034) negotiations.

This panel is organised by the EADI Working Group on "The European Union as a development actor"