Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2014

The Committee met six times during 2014, on 7 February, 4 April, 6 June, 26 September, 7 November and 8 December. The final meeting was also attended by the representatives of the development NGOs’ Cercle de Coopération.

Among the subjects addressed during the meetings, the following should be noted in particular:

a) Guiding principles of development cooperation policy

• Given its new make-up, the Interministerial Committee for Development Cooperation’s various duties were explained to the new members at the beginning of the year, especially those duties connected with the approval that must be granted to a cooperation official or aid worker, as well as their cancellation, and the cases of special applications of this status or of development leave. Some suggestions regarding the application form were made and then implemented.
• The Committee approved the annual report on its work, which was included in the 2013 annual Luxembourg development cooperation report.
• The Committee was given a presentation on the broad outlines of the 2013 annual Luxembourg development cooperation report, including new aspects such as the ITC and Evaluations sections.
• The Committee was given a presentation of the Action Plan for Development Effectiveness provided to the Directorate of Cooperation in October 2014.
• The Committee examined the broad outlines of the post-2015 development framework and its financing through the future Sustainable Development Goals. Although the greater part of the decisions on the future agenda for sustainable development will be made in New York in September 2015, a conference on the financing of development will take place in Addis Ababa in July 2015. Given the universal nature of the future Sustainable Development Goals, all ministries are affected by these decisions.
• The Luxembourg development cooperation conference held in April on the topics of post-2015 and resilience was also the subject of a presentation to the Committee.

b) European Year for Development

• Committee members were kept informed of preparations for the EYD 2015, which is organised by the European Commission in close collaboration with the Latvian and Luxembourg presidencies of the EU. They noted that the opening ceremony would take place in Riga in January 2015 and the closing ceremony in Luxembourg in December 2015.
• For EYD 2015, a national programme of initiatives and actions has been prepared with the Cercle of NGOs, the Chamber of Deputies Foreign Affairs Committee and the European Commission’s Representation in Luxembourg, the European Parliament Information Office and many other actors such as the EIB and the European Court of Auditors. Committee members were invited to inform their respective ministries about EYD 2015 and to devise some kind of concrete initiative in order to introduce the subject of development cooperation into the work of the various formal and informal committees, with a view to putting the principle of policy coherence for development into action. 

c) Policy Coherence for Development

• The Committee was given the presentation of the European Union’s 2013 report on policy consistency by Mr Norbert Probst of the European Commission Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (EuropeAid). Mr Probst talked about the history of Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) within the European institutions, the role of the European Commission and the Member States, the development of the report and its content.
• The Committee was informed of the work of the network of experts and focal points for Policy Coherence for Development at the European level; this network is a group which meets regularly in Brussels. At the group’s meeting, the work of the Luxembourg Interministerial Committee for Development was also presented.
• Various discussions also took place regarding the working method to be adopted when addressing topics from the perspective of consistency, especially in terms of the choice of topic, examining the subject area and the final conclusions. The Committee eventually acquired a tool to address policy coherence for development in June 2014. It then drew up a list of topics to examine in 2015, such as compensation funds, economic partnership agreements, agricultural policy and social protection.
• At its meeting on 8 December, the Committee discussed with the representatives of the Cercle of NGOs the priority topics in its “2014 barometer” which the Cercle believes require more policy consistency. At the meeting the Cercle also suggested some modifications to the Committee’s work mechanism.

d) Official development assistance (ODA)

• The Committee examined the annual contributions eligible as ODA made by the ministries to the various international organisations. An indicative table was sent to members giving a breakdown for 2014 of expenditure to be accounted for as official development assistance. The Committee also heard explanations regarding coordination efforts between ministries to reach a budget where ODA accounts for 1% of GNI. The amounts of ODA of the various ministries are now centralised by the Directorate of Development Cooperation when the budget is drawn up, in order to supply full documentation to the general inspectorate of finances. 

e) Staff active within development

Pursuant to Article 4 of the Grand-Ducal Regulation of 7 August 2012, the committee approved in writing:

• 2 applications for cooperation agents status,
• an extension of 13 cooperation agents’ status,
• the extension of 14 aid workers’ status,
• 17 applications for assimilated aid worker status,
• 71 applications for development cooperation leave.

These figures are considerably higher than those of the previous year.