European Development Policy

Global policymaking is at risk, threatening the international liberal order which has, for all its faults and lacunae, served the world well since the second world war. There has never been a period of such rapid progress in the human condition. The policies and international cooperation that have brought all this about are not always easy. Our Commitment to Development Index, the 14th annual edition of which is published today, measures the progress of the world’s industrialised economies towards policies that contribute to make this world better for everyone.

If the UK leaves the EU customs union, it will need new trade policies for poor countries as well as with major trading partners. This post kicks off a discussion of what that policy should look like by assessing which country currently has the best trade-for-development policy in the World. 

As President Obama convenes an important global summit on refugees, and world leaders at the UN General Assembly address the burgeoning issue of migration and forced displacement, we’ve taken a closer look at how the richest countries in the world support development and the alleviation of poverty through their migration policies. Migration is one of the seven components of our Commitment to Development Index, an annual exercise to marshall millions of data points to track how rich country policies affect the world’s poorest people and places, across seven different policy areas.