Challenges of German city2city cooperation and the way forward to a quality debate

In Germany, municipal development cooperation is currently facing big internal and external challenges. This article shows that in the light of these challenges, the future of German development policy on community level, especially of the city-to-city (city2city) cooperation, must lie in increasing its quality with regard to efficiency, effectiveness and its integration with the international development cooperation framework. After a short introduction regarding the role of communities in development cooperation, this article gives an overview of German municipal development policy. Contrary to the European trend towards more support for municipal development policies and activities, the German partnership activities still lack the necessary legal security and financial support. Consequently, their constructive contributions to their partners' development are smaller than they could be under more favourable conditions. Subsequently, selected approaches of how to support community partnerships at the federal level are presented and will highlight some characteristics for successful cooperation. The far-reaching structural changes within the partner communities in the South, driven by manifold processes of urbanization, democratization, and decentralization, make it necessary for the partners in the North to adjust: to new mandated contacts, political structures and needs. This adjustment offers a chance for active German communities to make a constructive contribution to the partner communities' situation and to assume a responsible role in international development cooperation as a third power next to the federal government and the states. The article concludes that quality enhancement is the only way for German city2city cooperation to make a productive contribution to the structural changes in the partner countries and gain more political support and expert recognition. Some possible criteria and benchmarks for quality evaluation are proposed to further spark the quality debate.