Case: Policy coherence in general

09-11-2009 PCD made it to the Parliament!

On Monday afternoon, as a last item on the agenda, over 1,5 hour of the DEVE Committee meeting was scheduled for discussing Policy Coherence for Development. The Committee is working on an own initiative report on the issue and presented the working document. Mrs. Keller, who is the rapporteur in this, explained the document that contains quite some critique to the Commission’s report that was said to be ‘vague’ and too positive.

She pointed out existing incoherencies that were not addressed enough, such as on Climate Change, where Mrs. Keller claimed there was too little financing, continuing pro-biofuel policies despite rising food prices and land grabbing as a result, too much investments in fossil fuels and no technology transfer. The choice of including intellectual property rights as a priority was considered strange from a development perspective and seemed more a protecting of EU business interests. The export and competition-based strategy of Global Europe and its consequences for trade was the main worry of this MEP, as the EU is still urging for fast liberalisation of developing country’s commercial sector despite the lessons learned from the crisis. The last issue that was highlighted was in relation to the communication’s focus on the Whole of the Union and including ODA+ financial flows in the analysis, as well as why and how the Commission had decided on the five priorities: Climate Change, Security, Intellectual Property Rights (likely to be changed to Trade and Finance however by the Council), Food Security and Migration.

After this presentation of the Committee Working paper, Mrs. Moreau of the Commission PCD unit reacted to this briefly and presented her own report. In reaction to Mrs. Keller they explained that the 5 priorities will actually cover all 12 policy areas of before and allow for a more pro-active approach and that other finance flows are often much bigger than ODA and that it is therefore relevant to increase the development benefits of these. Mrs. Moreau referred to different policy areas that do indeed show outstanding issues as shown in the report and admitted that more could be done in terms of ensuring health objectives in the field of Intellectual Property Rights for example. Unfortunately she did not go into the EU demands in this issue in Free Trade Negotiations with developing countries, but did refer to positive potential of technology transfer and innovation with IPR.

After this a presentation of CONCORD followed, presenting the report (as you can find more information on here) and emphasising the need for continuation of the work, legal status of Impact Assessments, a complaints mechanism and more evidence based PCD: issues that are addressed in the Fair Politics reaction to the report as well (find here). In the presentation some existing incoherencies, as well as the communication’s focus on ODA+,  that is considered dangerous for existing ODA obligations, were criticized.
Then ECDPM presented their work on PCD, developments in the Council (draft council conclusions for next week) and what they feel the Parliament can do.

Lastly there were the – often critical – questions and statements from the MEPs to the Commission. Michael Cashman (S&D) was particularly passionate on the issue, but also his delegation member Thijs Berman (S&D) and MEPs such as Zimmer, Sargentini and Lovin added to the debate. We were happy to see that they touched upon many of our case studies as Economic Partnership Agreements, Intellectual Property Rights and Fisheries Partnership Agreements were all discussed in terms of incoherence with development.

Unfortunately time ran out, but not before the Chair of the Committee, Eva Joly, decided that a next session will be held to continue the discussion. Fair Politics is very happy the issue of PCD has finally really made it to the political arena and will keep you informed!