Italy and policy coherence for development in 2009

According to the recently EC report on Policy Coherence for Development (PCD), all 12 priority policy areas listed in 2005 have moved in the right direction, at national and the UE level. The report structure is not transparent and it does not allow to list which Member States are more progressive or at the bottom of the Policy Coherence reforms. According to the report, all PCD areas showed some progress with Italy being indirectly praised for its reform on migration policy ( multy-entry VISA), energy ( support to the Carbon fund) and medical research policies to support developing countries academic institutions. These remarks are quite contradictory with what Italy reported to the Commission when submitting its questionnaire. In its submission, Italy considered “very weak” the whole EU progress on the PCD agenda over the last 2 years. On average, it self-assessed its PCD performance positively, yet acknowledging the lack of any progress in terms of implementing the link between poverty reduction and migration, the support to e-government and lack of implementation for the EC strategy for Energetic needs in developing countries.