Development – Meeting of the National Council for Development and International Solidarity (Paris, 23 October 2018)

While France has embarked on a path that should lead to the allocation of 0.55% of its GNI to Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 2022, President Macron confirmed his desire for a new Framework and Planning Bill [loi d’orientation et de programmation] in order to give predictability to this path and to implement a new method with a strengthened partnership dimension.

The CNDSI session on October 23 will provide an opportunity to further examine new ODA approaches. Member of the National Assembly Hervé Berville will present the proposals that emerged from the report that he submitted in August to the prime minister, in which he stresses the need to more closely involve civil society, youth, companies, and diaspora communities in order to modernize France’s partnership and international solidarity policy. This session will make it possible to get feedback from 53 figures from the CNDSI, NGO representatives, unions, employers, economic stakeholders, local and regional governments, universities and research centers, parliamentarians and prominent foreign officials.

This discussion is part of a broader process of consultation with civil society stakeholders on the revision of the Framework and Planning Bill, to which an extraordinary session of the CNDSI will be devoted on November 15.

Furthermore, in response to the input of civil society organizations during the CNDSI session on June 20, and in the interest of transparency in the upcoming multilateral events, this session will provide an opportunity to take stock of preparations for the French presidency of the G7 in 2019, the fall meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, the informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in its development configuration, and to present the calendar of strategic deadlines of the multilateral development banks, before a specific CNDSI session is devoted to these topics in 2019.