On 4 April 2019, the Centre of International Relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, hosted the launch workshop for the European Association of Development Institutes’ (EADI) new Working Group ‘The European Union as a Development Actor’. The workshop was titled ‘EU Development Policy at a Crossroads, Without a Compass? A Scrutiny of the Proposed Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI)’ and took place at the premises of the Faculty of Social Sciences where the EADI Executive Committee session was also organized. The workshop had two panels. The first panel focused on the challenges of EU development cooperation, the changing EU discourse on aid, and NDICI proposal. The second panel addressed the member states’ reaction to the proposed changes in EU policies by Slovenian and Czech governments and NGOs. The panelists presented challenging questions related to the dilemmas of a new single instrument as well as the possible implications that such a policy shift may have on the context of development cooperation – an area where up to now EU has been an important trend-setter and donator.
