Brexit: UK will not seek a formal agreement with EU on development

LONDON — The U.K. will not seek a formal relationship with the European Union on development work after the country withdraws from the bloc at the end of the year, according to a senior government official. The U.K.’s Department for International Development will instead pursue cooperation with the EU on a “case-by-case” basis, according to the head of its Europe department, Omar Daair. He told a webinar hosted by British Expertise, a network of U.K. development contractors, that existing EU rules for dealing with third parties were sufficient for future collaboration on development projects. “We will continue to cooperate with the EU on a lot of [global challenges], as we do with other large development partners, but it will be now on a case-by-case basis and within existing rules of third-party-country collaboration,” Daair said. He said it “made sense” for the U.K. and EU to work together on key issues as significant development actors. But he added: “The difference here is we don’t need a formal mechanism to be in place to do that. … These are discussions that can be done in an informal, ad hoc way. It's how donors deal with each other all the time.” In the future, the U.K. would expect to have the same relationship with the EU as it does with other big donor countries or organizations, Daair said. “That means we, as the U.K., are not seeking participation in EU external action programs,” he continued. “We are not looking, in the future, to put more money through EU development and humanitarian programming or to have any arrangements that go beyond existing third-country rules for working together.” “The U.K. does not want a special relationship with the EU, but rather it wants to be treated like any third country.” --— Mikaela Gavas, Development Cooperation in Europe Programme co-director, Center for Global Development Daair told the meeting that the U.K.’s political agreement with the EU would mainly be based on free trade and that the withdrawal agreement “won’t see much talk about development and foreign policy. We don’t think what it needs is some big, clunky institutional framework to deliver foreign policy cooperation.” Mikaela Gavas, co-director of the Center for Global Development’s Development Cooperation in Europe Programme, said the remarks were “consistent with the overall signal that the U.K. government is sending: The U.K. does not want a special relationship with the EU, but rather it wants to be treated like any third country, without any special privileges.” This is “extremely shortsighted,” according to Gavas. “The U.K. will remain a major development power, but it will have no influence over the world’s largest development player — the EU — and its member states.” She added: “This also sends a signal that the U.K. cares less about global development than it once did. The resulting impact on the U.K.’s soft power is unlikely to be positive.”