Advancing the EU’s Global Development Agenda at the Foreign Affairs Council

Advancing the EU’s global development agenda at the Foreign Affairs Council

Ireland  has played an active, efficient and effective role in the area of international development throughout our presidency of the EU. Working in close cooperation with the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, the European External Action Service, the Commission and Member States, we have used our Presidency to deliver on 3 key areas in the EU’s development and humanitarian agenda:

• ensuring that the EU actively engages in development of the “post-2015” agenda;
• highlighting the connections between the issues of hunger, nutrition and climate change; and
• forging stronger links between emergency humanitarian relief and long term development aid.

At a Foreign Affairs Council held today in Brussels, Minister of State Costello and his EU counterparts endorsed a common EU approach to the new global development framework to replace the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

The Ministers adopted a new robust EU policy to address the challenge of food and nutrition security in partner countries. This policy will have a far reaching and positive effect for the 870 million people globally who continue to live in hunger.

The Ministers also agreed a new EU approach to help build the resilience of countries and communities  at risk of natural or man-made crises.