Reforms have been high on the European agenda since the end of the 1990s. The changes in the overall institutional machinery for dealing with European external relations and administering aid have received considerable attention. The yearly reports of EuropeAid on the implementation of EC aid testify of the progresses achieved and the further challenges ahead in terms of improving aid delivery .
Yet many changes have also occurred at the strategic level. Over the past decade, the EC has been actively developing new policies to catch up with rapidly changing world. A case in point was the thorough revision of ACP-EU relations, which led to the signing of the Cotonou Agreement in 2000. The transition from the Lomé Conventions to the Cotonou Agreement involved more than a change in name. The new Treaty marked an important break with the past. Major innovations have been introduced to improve the overall impact of aid, trade and political cooperation between the ACP and the EC.
This drive for policy innovation has continued in a variety of partnership relations, sectors of intervention or thematic areas. On the whole, the EC tends to be lauded for the quality of its policy frameworks. Such a positive assessment can, for instance, be found in a variety of independent evaluations of EC Development Cooperation.
Gap between policy objectives and actual practices
However, what about the implementation of new policy objectives? Is the EC –as an institution- able to deliver on this host of new policy commitments? Or is it systematically confronted with major gaps between stated policy objectives and actual implementation practices?
In order to better understand the delivery challenges involved with EC policy changes, three specific cases are considered in this paper. They concern important policy changes recently introduced with regard to:
• The new partnership between Africa and Europe, as proposed in the ‘Joint Africa-Europe Strategy’ (JAES) adopted during the Lisbon Summit (December 2007).
• The growing support for governance as a key priority of EC Development Cooperation (which gained momentum from 2000 onwards).
• The adoption of the participatory development agenda and related changes in cooperation approaches with civil society (which also became prominent from 2000 onwards).
For each of these three cases, this paper (i) briefly reviews the policy changes involved; (ii) examines the EC implementation strategies followed and the progress achieved; and (iii) identifies some the main ‘implementation gaps’ that arise in practice. Building on this analysis, the paper draws a set of overall conclusions on EC delivery capacity and pointers for discussion.
