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Building Strong Development Cooperation: Partnership Opportunities between Cooperatives and the EU

In 2000, United Nations (UN) member states recognised the need to build global partnerships for development and the exchange of expertise as one of the Millennium Development Goals. Across the international development field, partnerships are rightly acknowledged as critical to successful development and to achieving sustainable change.

In this study, we will use a broad brush approach to partnership and explore its many forms, focusing on actual and potential partnerships between the cooperative movement, European institutions and other international organisations engaged in international development. The study draws on the experience and expertise of the members of the Cooperatives Europe Development Platform (CEDP), a network of ten European cooperative organisations which are members of Cooperatives Europe and work on issues of development policy and development implementation. The CEDP members come from diverse sectors and share their expertise in complementary fields, including cooperative financing, agricultural cooperative development, and cooperative law.

This study is part of the ‘Cooperatives in development’ project, led by Cooperatives Europe and cofinanced by the European Commission under the Non-State Actors (NSA) grant scheme. This initiative, which started in September 2012, builds upon the activities of the CEDP and seeks to foster exchanges within the global cooperative network for an impact driven, coordinated, and sustainable cooperative development approach. It also seeks to enhance dialogue with European Union (EU) institutions, providing decision makers with input and data from grassroots cooperatives in order to support coherent EU policy making and strategic planning, and advocating for greater visibility of cooperatives within EU policies.

Financing and Development Global
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