EU Development Cooperation Policy: Between Constitutional Strictures and Policy Objectives

Timely and incisive, this book offers a critical insight into the legal structure of EU development cooperation policy, exploring the innate complexities that give rise to legal challenges in this crucial area of EU external action. Investigating the interaction between the key tenets of coherence and conferral, Tina Van den Sanden assesses how the Union’s legal framework affects the attainment of its development cooperation objectives.

Demonstrating the inherent tension between the central principle of conferral, which restricts the Union’s legal competences to the boundaries established within its treaties, and the need for coherence, this ambitious book provides an insightful analysis of EU development cooperation policy. Chapters further scrutinise the legal scope of such policy and its delimitation with closely linked policy areas of environment, the common commercial policy (CCP), and the common foreign and security policy (CFSP); establish the division of competences and cooperation between the Union and its member states; and evaluate the management of the institutional division of competences between different EU actors. The book concludes with an assessment of whether the Union’s legal, constitutional, and institutional structures are equipped to meet and support its own development cooperation aims.

Both legal scholars and practitioners interested in EU external relations law will benefit from this book’s comprehensive analysis of the underlying legal frameworks that form and influence EU development cooperation policy.