§ Lord Juddasked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress they are making in the European Union towards greater coherence in policies of direct or indirect significance for economic and social development in the less developed countries of the world. [HL551]
§ Lord WhittyThe Government's development White Paper commits us to work to ensure the full range of domestic and international policies affecting developing countries take account of the UK's sustainable development objectives. The European Union's commitment to policy consistency is set out in Articles 130 u and v of the Treaty of Maastricht. The Government are therefore working with European partners for consistency between policies in the areas of development, environment, trade, agriculture and investment amongst others.
An example of recent progress is implementation of the World Trade Organisation's Least Developed Countries (LDC) Initiative. Under the UK Presidency, agreement has now been reached on how to implement the EU's commitment to extend Lomé equivalent preferential trade terms to the nine non-ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) LDCs.