The impact of brexit on EU development policy

Abstract

Brexit is likely to herald fundamental changes in the operation, scope and practice of EU development policy, due to the UK’s key role in leading and defining the geographical and sectoral remit of policy, and through its provision of large-scale funding. Through a focus on the EU’s relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, this article explores these potential impacts. It highlights the importance of the timing of Brexit in relation to the contemporaneous renegotiation of EU–ACP relations and the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework and argues that the focus on static impacts of Brexit, in terms of removing the UK from the ‘EU equation’, overlooks the broader dynamics of political economy in which it is situated. Through the analysis of the anticipatory adjustments and discursive dynamics in EU development policy that articulate the pursuit of material interests, the article helps understand both the dynamics of Brexit and the broader transformations in which it is located.