Letter from the OECD ECG to ECA Watch

 

Mr. Nicholas HILDYARD
ECA Watch
2b rue Jules Ferry
93100 Montreuil
[nick@fifehead.demon.co.uk]

TAD/XCR/2008.187

Paris, 25 September 2008

Dear Nicholas,

EXPORT CREDITS: CONSULTATION WITH CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS, 18 NOVEMBER 2008

I write in response to your letter of 21 August 2008, on behalf of ECA Watch, responding to my invitation to participate in the consultation meeting between Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Members of the OECD’s Working Party on Export Credits and Credit Guarantees (ECG) and the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits, which is scheduled for Tuesday 18 (morning) November 2008 at the OECD Conference Centre in Paris.

I regret ECA Watch’s decision, in the absence of substantive responses to your proposals on peer reviews addressed to Members’ governments, to decline this invitation. Other CSOs have advised that they will participate in the meeting and, as a consequence, the November 2008 consultation will take place.

To update you on the peer review issue, at its meeting in April 2008 the ECG discussed the different modalities applied in the OECD; the outcomes were disseminated on the OECD website. Since then, the ECG has considered various proposals to enhance the current review mechanisms for the two export credit OECD Recommendations: these discussions are on-going and are expected to be concluded in November 2008.

The ECG also considered, at its meeting in June 2008, the modalities for future consultations with CSOs and agreed that the best forum for these is continuation of the annual consultation meetings, so that the views of all interested parties could be mutually exchanged. Furthermore, the ECG agreed that all parties should be invited to submit agenda items and written submissions to ensure that such consultations may be as interactive and effective as possible. As a result of these decisions, invitations were sent to CSOs in July 2008.

Lastly, the ECG’s Environmental Practitioners have discussed how CSOs could contribute to the building of a body of experience in the implementation of the OECD Recommendation on the environment. The Practitioners consider that bilateral contacts with CSOs at the national level are the best forums for discussing both individual projects and ECA environmental processes; they also consider that selected CSOs could be invited to future meetings if there were to be particular issues on which CSOs’ technical input could be advantageous.

As always, I, the Bureau, the Secretariat as well as our Members remain available for bilateral discussions with ECA Watch. However, in the light of the above, perhaps you would reconsider attending the forthcoming consultation meeting. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Secretariat, Julian PAISEY (Tel: +33 (0)1 45 24 99 23; e-mail: julian.paisey@oecd.org).

Yours sincerely,

Janet West

for: Ms. Nicole BOLLEN
Chairman of the Working Party on Export Credits and Credit Guarantees and of the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits

Cc: Sébastien GODINOT, Amis de la Terre, Paris [finance@amisdelaterre.org]
Members of the Working Party on Export Credits and Credit Guarantees, OECD, Paris
Julian PAISEY, Policy Analyst, Export Credits Division, OECD, Paris