Genuine Target or Collateral Damage? Analysing the influence of Populist Radical Right governments on the EU’s Development Policy

EU development policy has recently moved from a very low salience issue towards a more politicized policy area. One key factor that has shaped the politicization of EU development policy is the rise of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) across European countries. Whereas previous studies have focused on PRRPs as opposition parties in EU member states’ development policies, few studies have analysed the influence of populist governments on EU development policy. This paper analyses to what extent their behavior in EU development policy is ruled by “unpolitics”, meaning a destructive approach to undermine EU policy-making. Having theorized on two potential strategies of unpolitics in EU development policy that we term “cross-policy blackmailing” and “populist profiling, we conduct two case studies. The first case concerns the 2017 European Consensus on Development. The second case concerns the preparation of the negotiation mandate for a new international agreement with the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) and the delays in signing the resulting “post-Cotonou agreement”. We find that PRRP governments stalled the conclusion of the Post-Cotonou Agreement by adopting a combined strategy of cross-policy blackmailing and populist profiling. In the case of the 2017 European Consensus on Development, we find that populist governments fundamentally reject the decision-making rules and the norms on gender and sexual and reproductive health rights driven by a strategy of populist profiling. Based on the case studies, we generalize on the scope conditions of “unpolitics” in EU development policy.