Case: Policy coherence in general

30-06-2010 Ghana’s traders, lumberjacks and fortune hunters!

This is the title to our impact study on Ghana, presenting an analysis of Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) in Practice: The impact of European policies on development in Ghana.

On the 29th of June the impact study was released during a meeting in the European Parliament. After the meeting, the Fair Politics Award Ceremony took place. Please find the results below!

The meeting was opened by Peter Heintze, the Director of the Evert Vermeer Foundation, who explained the background and the aim of our impact study. The impact study was conducted in the framework of the joint project; 'PCD: Making Development Work Better', with our partners in Portugal, the Czech Republic and Estonia. The aim of our impact study is to find out how European policies, having an impact on development are perceived in Ghana; Are they coherent to the EU’s development objectives?; Do they contribute to development? How well are policies being implemented and therefore are policies also coherent in practice? Three European policies were evaluated namely; Trade (the Economic Partnership Agreements), Illegal logging (the implementation of the VPAs) and Migration (brain drain, circular migration).

Member of the Development Committee in the European Parliament; Thijs Berman, chaired the meeting and introduced the topics of the day; 1) The impact of the EPAs on Ghana and 2) Evidence based PCD. He also presented his view on PCD and explained the current state of affairs in the European Parliament in relation to PCD.

The first panel discussion was about the impact of the EPAs on Ghana. The session started off with a presentation of the main results of the impact study. After which Sanoussi Bilal, Trade Expert from the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) and Peter Thompson, Director Development and Trade of DG Trade in the European Commission presented their points of view. The discussion was about many of the contentious issues around the EPAs; the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clause, the WTO+ clauses, the EPAs development component and regional integration. But also more generally on the use of the EPAs and whether there is an alternative available for Ghana.

Sanoussi Bilal stressed the incoherence within the process of negotiations especially in terms of regional integration, the lack of ownership on the side of Ghana and the EU not being very convincing in terms of promoting the EPA as a tool for development. He also said that if the EPA were solely aimed at development, clauses like MFN would not have been included.

Peter Thompson of the European Commission responded by saying that cultural differences make the regional negotiations complicated, but claimed that the ECOWAS region seems promising as they are about to conclude a common external tariff, which is not a EPA requirement. He went on by saying that countries in Africa are and were never forced to enter negotiations or to sign an agreement. After the Cotonou partnership ended; there were two options. Either go for the General System of Preferences (GSP) to comply with WTO requirements or to go for the more generous option; a partnership. These partnerships are unique in the sense that they have never been established before, but they are certainly a better option than GSP in the eyes of Thompson.

Furthermore Thompson said if countries would say no to the EPA, this would be completely fine and up to them. This remark was challenged however as according to others, Ghana had certainly asked for GSP+, but the EU would have rejected this. Thompson replied by saying that he would have known if Ghana would have applied.  Patrick Amos Poku, Minister Counselor at the embassy of Ghana in Brussels and part of the negotiation team of the EPAs said that Ghana did ask for GSP, but was strongly discouraged by the EU to apply for it. Finally Thompson stressed that there have been plenty of consultations on the EPAs in relation to PCD under article 12 of the Cotonou Agreement.

Sarah Hardus, author of the impact study started off the second panel discussion by presenting her experiences while doing her research. Although her research both at home as well as in the field was informative there were a few things that are problematic when doing an impact study concerning PCD. First and foremost there is a lack of knowledge on PCD in Ghana among European Diplomats, local government institutions ans NGOs. A second problem is; drawing the line as to what extent the EU is responsible for the implementation of its policies and the resulting effects[1]. Paul Engel, Director of ECDPM, was asked to respond to Sarah’s experiences. He was extremely happy with the case study. PCD has been around since 1992 (Maastricht Treaty) and the concept is still developing. Theoretically, more coherence should lead to better development but it is becoming clear that this is not always the case. Donors can coherently focus on the wrong projects. Therefore he emphasized the importance of the continuation of reporting and monitoring of the impact of EU policies. Françoise Moreau, Acting Director DG Development, explained that defining PCD is complicated and understood the dilemmas that Sarah Hardus ran into. She called on everybody to start brainstorming on methodologies, and minimum standards that can be used when conducting an impact study on PCD in practice.
 
After the presentation of the Ghana Impact Study, Fair Politics awarded the Members of the European Parliament who showed the most effort to make EU policies more coherent for development. Charles Tannock (2 points-ECR), Joe Higgins (3 points-GUE/NGL) and Kader Arif (4 points-S&D) were the winners of their political groups. Within the ALDE and EPP political groups it remained a tie between all the MEPs who had earned a point on our monitoring scorebord. The S&D group as a whole contributed the most to PCD this parliamentary year with an end score of almost 40 points. The Fair Politician of this Parliamentary Year was a shared honour this year. Eva Joly (Greens/EFA), Head of the DEVE committee, received the most points for her effort and was therefore one of the winners. Franziska Keller (Greens/EFA), “the PCD Queen” as Thijs Berman called her, was also chosen by Fair Politics as Fair Politician of the year, for her consistent effort all year by drafting the EP PCD report, which was adopted in May this year and for her efforts to get PCD on everybody’s agenda.

Find "Ghana’s traders, lumberjacks and fortune hunters!" here