News from the Polish NGDO Platform Grupa Zagranica

Poland no longer includes spending on refugees in their ODA 
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided not to include spending on refugees in Poland in the Official Development Aid reported for 2013. For years this has been an advocacy objective of Grupa Zagranica, the Polish NGDO platform. CONCORD’s yearly AidWatch report counts in-donor country refugee costs, together with debt relief, interest on loans, tied aid and in-donor country spending on students, as inflated aid. Poland and Ireland are the only two OECD DAC member countries that did not report in-donor spending on refugees as ODA in 2013. In-country refugee spending amounted to less than 2% of Polish ODA in 2011 and 2012. Nevertheless, Grupa Zagranica sees this decision as a success and congratulates Polish MFA on the progressive step in their ODA reporting.


PCD in Polish Impact Assessment Guidelines 
Every official regulation in Poland needs to be analysed in terms of its potential impact on economy, society and environment before being submitted to the parliament for debate and enactment. Impact Assessment is a common practice in EU countries, further encouraged and supported through the ‘Better Regulation 2015’ programme. The recent update of the Impact Assessment (IA) guidelines opened an opportunity for the integration of policy coherence for development (PCD) approach in the Polish legislative process. Following a focused advocacy action of Grupa Zagranica the new guidelines include a question relating to the potential “impact on social and economic development of priority countries of Polish development cooperation”. Grupa Zagranica plans further activities aiming at supporting the implementation of this element of the IA guidelines.

For more information, please contact Kasia Szeniawska, Policy Officer at Grupa Zagranica. 

Sources: For ODA http://goo.gl/FkTmdt and PCD http://goo.gl/sdv7be