Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2017

In 2017, Luxembourg was the subject of a peer review carried out by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Each member of the DAC is reviewed in this way every five years in order to monitor its efforts, to ask it to report on the performance of its commitments and to formulate recommendations for improvements.

In this context, at the end of 2016 Luxembourg submitted a memorandum setting out the main developments in its policy and programmes since the previous peer review in 2012. In March 2017, the Secretariat of the OECD and the two member countries of DAC appointed as “reviewers” – in this case, Denmark and the Slovak Republic – came to Luxembourg to obtain first-hand information of the context of Luxembourg’s work on development cooperation. Interviews were organised with the officials of the Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Infrastructure (MDDI). In addition, the DAC team met representatives of the LuxDev agency and the Cercle de coopération of development NGOs, as well as members of the Chamber of deputiesCommittee of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Development Cooperation and Immigration. They then carried out a review in the field in Senegal in order to evaluate how Luxembourg has integrated DAC’s policies, principles and major concerns into its actions.

On this basis, the team responsible for the peer review drew up a report, along with DAC’s main conclusions and recommendations, which were the subject of a discussion at a meeting with the members of DAC in Paris on 20 September 2017. A delegation from Luxembourg made up of the Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the MDDI, LuxDev and the Cercle de Coopération of development NGOs took part. At the meeting, the members of the DAC coordinated a debate on the lessons learned by Luxembourg’s development cooperation and its best practice, especially regarding fragile situations and the concentration of aid. Another debate focused on Luxembourg’s experience in terms of mobilising investors to finance actions to combat climate change.

The OECD published the final version of its report on Luxembourg on 19 October 2017. In its report, it welcomed the fact that Luxembourg is the second most generous donor after Norway. It also noted that Luxembourg is committed to putting into practice the principles of aid effectiveness in terms of applying, inter alia, the principles of mutual accountability and ownership in all its activities. Due to strong geographical and sector-based concentration, Luxembourg’s development cooperation is able to maximise its impact, visibility and influence in its priority countries. The OECD has also formulated 13 recommendations that Luxembourg must implement in the coming years. In the main, the OECD recommends that Luxembourg specify more closely its development cooperation policy by finalising specific strategies, and also it carry out more targeted evaluations in order to make good use of the experience gained.