The EU Coherence Programme has, during the past three years, examined the daily activities of MEPs by monitoring parliamentary questions, voting behaviour, speeches and publications. The Members of the European Parliament have been scrutinised for their efforts to enhance Policy Coherence for Development (PCD). Each time an MEP has engaged in a positive action related to one of our coherence case studies, a news item was published on this website, and the political group to which the MEP belongs was awarded a star in our PCD monitoring box

As the EU Coherence Programme will end its three year mandate this year, and will launch a renewed and improved Coherence Programme in January 2009, now is the time to organise an award ceremony in order to thank all of the nominated MEPs for taking into account Policy Coherence for Development in their daily work.  

The rules of the game

All of the MEPs who have received a Coherence star in the past three years are nominated for the EU Coherence Award Ceremony. Those MEPs who have not yet obtained a Coherence star, are still able to obtain one, by raising the interests of developing countries in any policy area that is likely to affect them, for instance by a addressing written question to the Commission, or by using time to address these issues at Committee meetings within the next couple of weeks.

During the award ceremony there will be a prize for all of the nominees, for having contributed to Policy Coherence for Development. But among all nominated MEPs only one will take home the title of “Coherence King” or “Coherence Queen”. The Coherence King or Queen is the MEP who has obtained the most Coherence stars throughout the past three years.

The Nominees

In the table below, the nominees, their political group and their number of stars received are revealed. As you can see, this ranking is only a current ranking. Nothing has been decided yet. There are a number of MEPs with just slight differences in the amounts of stars granted to them. In the next couple of weeks, until December the 8th, Coherence stars can still be obtained, and new nominees will be added to the existing list. The MEPs currently to be most likely to become Coherence King or Queen are; Thijs Berman, Dorette Corbey and Helene Goudin, followed up closely by Glenys Kinnock, David Martin and Raul Romeva I Rueda.  

The Overall Ranking:

Ranking per political group: