Resumen de EU development co-operation post-Lisbon: main Constitutional challenges

Morten Broberg, Rass Holdgaard

• The changes brought about by the 2009-Lisbon Treaty both directly and indirectly affected the EU's development co-operation policy. The Treaty's explication and reorganisation of the Union's external relations objectives and principles and the streamlining of the development co-operation policy objective (i.e. the identification of poverty reduction/eradication as a primary objective) are likely to have a lasting constitutional impact on policy-making and legal methodology in this policy area. Moreover, post-Lisbon, the Union's development cooperation policy is faced with three constitutional challenges: (1) organization of the financial aid aspect of the Union's development co-operation policy remains crucial; (2) finding the right constitutional balance for development co-operation policy vis-à-vis other policies constitutes an area of potential conflict; (3) the relationship between the 28 Member States' development co-operation policies and that of the Union presumably forms the most significant constitutional challenge.