For a long time, EU external action has been considered a field of technocratic, rational-bureaucratic decision-making and closed-door negotiations. In the past few years, however, the characteristics and intensity of political conflict over EU external action have changed, sparking a first wave of studies analyzing the politicization of EU foreign policy. However, the politicization of the EU’s development policy has not been studied and debates have overlooked the impact of increasingly blurry boundaries between different fields of EU external relations.

The workshop brought together scholars from various disciplines to present their papers on this topic and discuss three guiding questions: (1) How have the contours of political conflict over European development policy as a part of EU external action changed? (2) What conditions and drivers have enabled or constrained politicization and contestation in European development policy as a part of EU external action? (3) What are the effects of politicization and contestation for the EU as an actor in global development? The individual contributions to the workshop formed part of a special issue project to be published with the Journal of Common Market Studies.