Elise Ford was appointed as Head of EU Oxfam back in May 2009 and has been busy talking to the EU Institutions ever since. Last week she took some time out to talk to Alia Papageorgiou on just how important the Development MDGs are, the impact we could have at Copenhagen in December and describing for us exactly what she thinks coherent policy means (slightly different from the European Commission’s view). Interview follows.

How has it been getting to know the new parliamentarians of the European Parliament?
Well today for example we had a meeting with socialist development MEPs about their vision for the next 5 years which I think is really refreshing as now is the time in a five year cycle, and that you can see that they go beyond “what’s the thing we need to deliver in the next month or the next few months”. I think that in terms of development, of course there’s a certain responsive agenda that you have to follow and are laid out by MEPs and you have to respond but also it is about taking a longer term perspective and certainly for Oxfam 2010 is going to be a key year, because we have the MDGs review. If you look at 2005 and what the European Union did as a leadership role, against strong opposition, again you think what we will do now. This is the parliament that’s going to deliver on MDGs, this is the Commission that’s going to deliver on the MDGs and its quite nice to see that those are the sort of ways that they’re thinking as well – “where should the development committee be on the next debate in the next five years?” What do we want to achieve by 2014.

The variations within the Development Committee?
The voice of new MEPs from the new member states seems to be more coordinated. I worked in the European Parliament before I was working for Oxfam, on the development committee and I think back then, MEPs from new member states felt less at ease talking on development issues so I think it was a positive thing that in the Karel De Gucht hearing MEPs from new member states, well really not “new “ anymore but Member States members are taking a leadership role on development issues. That will be one of the interesting things to see how that voice comes into the development debate over the next 5 years perhaps with the new Vice Chair woman.

The development committee in the European Parliament, what do you understand as its view on aid?
The European Commission is facing challenges and the European Union is facing the same challenges that MEPs are facing now. One of the key issues for Oxfam is policy coherence for the development community. It’s about not only development policy which is crucial, aid, poverty and quality aid effectiveness, but also going beyond that and saying it’s not good enough that we’re giving development aid but at the same time we’ve got policies in other areas that are taking away from that.
Development has to be viewed from a much broader perspective, we have that quite clearly in the Treaty, on policy being coherent with development objectives. But, what you have is the reality of a sectoral approach. You’ll have the environment committee taking its opinion, on what’s happening on Copenhagen you’ll also have DG ENV taking its position and wondering where was DG DEV on that. One of the things that we have to do as a development community is both work at parliament level and the commission level, because how do you get development to have a strong voice on those issues that are not pure development but have impacts on developing countries. One of the things that NGOs propose is the next meetings that are to be tabled bring all the players together form DG Environment  and DG DEV for example and trade and support MEPs on cross policy governance. That, I think, will be a challenge for the Commission.
There was a communication on policy coherence for development that came out on 15 September which has been the first proposal coming forth to be adopted by member states on this issue. For us what policy coherence for development should mean is really addressing political challenges of what it means to have a fully coherent development policy, which might mean trade policy isn’t’ always exclusively in the interests of European businesses. It also has to be thinking what is in the interest of developing countries. And what does that actually mean in practice.

Were you happy with this move towards policy coherence?
What we’re concerned with is that we don’t really see is the commission working on those issues at the moment. That it’s avoiding the political and turning it into a technical issue. But certainly we hope that the Member States through the institutional reform as well will actually take steps to make the EU more coherent.

Some have started speculating that the MDGs won’t be met, how would you respond to that?
Something like the maternal mortality rate for example, that is going to go missing. But I do think it is very dangerous to enter into that rhetoric. We cannot fail. We set up a commitment in the year 2000 to meet those objectives by 2015 and what we need to be doing now is to step up efforts to make sure we get to those targets in 2015, rather than going “oh it’s looking difficult” and then backing away. We’ve seen a lot of progress towards the MDGs and now is going to be the crucial turning point. If you look at why we haven’t secured as much progress as we would want its clear from a developing country’s perspective, the biggest commitment that we made was to have that 0.7, that’s a classic example and we’re just not living up to that.
This is not an easy task, it’s not easy to achieve the MDGs, we certainly could be doing a lot more which we’re not, and 2010 needs to be about stepping up and looking at the five year deadline looking at what can we do and making sure that we do make them rather than thinking about the challenges. It is challenging, development is challenging. There are no easy solutions. But it would be dangerous to forget about the commitments we’ve made and switch agenda.

Next on the agenda for Oxfam?
Securing a great and secure deal for developing countries at Copenhagen, that’s what we’re really working towards.

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