When she spoke as candidate for the presidency of the European Commission before the assembled members of the European Parliament on 16 July 2019, Ursula von der Leyen articulated Europe's global challenges as follows:

In her speech, von der Leyen delivered a clear vision of a sui generis collective European position. But reality often tells another story. Consider European development policy in Africa. For decades, the EU has undertaken several important steps in realizing its goals of European integration. During the 2000s, the EU passed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and began forging a new consensus on development. Now the EU is working to shape international development cooperation in accordance with its agenda to promote human rights, good governance, and democracy. One challenge for the European Commission has been to “produce a statement on EU development policy, a sort of Brussels consensus to counter the Washington consensus” (Carbone 2007: 54–5). With the establishment of European External Action Service in 2010, moreover, the EU is emerging as a major actor in the field of global development.

Nevertheless, there are a number of obstacles to the creation of a common European position on development. Internally, the EU has not overcome the conflicts of interests and competing policies among the member states. Externally, the EU is still facing challenges dealing with stakeholders at the local level in African countries where European interests and colonial legacies often become entangled. Increasingly, moreover, Europe is not the only player.