European Union Policy Coherence for Food Security: Aligning Parallel Agendas

While the EU is the world’s major development actor on food security, some of its other policies are still contested as harmful to global food security and agricultural development.

This paper from ECDPM discusses how far the EU’s commitments and institutional mechanisms for Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) have supported its development objectives in the area of global food security. 

Derived from the PCD Work Programme 2010-2013, four EU policy areas with a potential impact on food security are discussed: agriculture, fisheries, trade and biofuels. Much remains to be done to increase PCD’s usefulness as a guidance and reporting tool. Recommendations to enhance PCD efforts for food security include: stronger linkages between the development and PCD agendas, clearer targets, stronger but realistic political engagement and a broader knowledge base on impacts. Without a strong political drive, there is a distinct lack of scope to promote genuine change towards more development-friendly EU policy-making the paper finds.

EU and global food security: Donor or competitor? from ECDPM