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Introduction

In a commendable effort to increase accountability, the international community set itself a target date of 2015 to achieve the key objectives of the historic United Nations Millennium Declaration, on which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are based.

This widely recognised deadline has inevitably attracted considerable debate. As it approaches, there has been much research on whether the targets as set out in the MDGs will be met, along with a parallel discussion on what might succeed them.

International development efforts will not simply stop in 2015, as there is still much left to do. But do developing countries and the wider international community need a new global framework beyond the MDGs?

This European Report on Development aims to provide an independent contribution to the debate on a possible post-2015 development framework to succeed the MDGs and what elements it might usefully incorporate.

Focus of the Report The Report focuses on the potential value of a new global framework in generating a concerted movement to promote development and support the efforts of poor countries to this end. Have the MDGs helped or even hindered their development progress, or have they perhaps served mainly to mobilise donors? How might a new global agenda most usefully support national development efforts?

The Report sets out to identify ideas for a possible new framework and to provide evidence, analysis and research-based recommendations to support them. At the same time the aim is not to conduct an exhaustive analysis of possible ingredients for a post-2015 framework nor to design a complete new set of goals.

The Report also analyses the role of the European Union (EU) as a global actor in advancing international development, both through its development cooperation policies and through its other policies that also influence development outcomes. While developing countries have the prime responsibility for their own development and increasingly take the lead in setting the parameters of international cooperation, Europe can, and indeed should, continue to make an important contribution to the achievement of any successor to the MDGs.