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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Tenth anniversary of EPA negotiations: Not a time for celebration

by

20121004

Sep­tem­ber 27, 2012, marked the tenth an­niver­sary of the be­gin­ning of ne­go­ti­a­tions for Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ments (EPAs) be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) and the 79-mem­ber coun­tries of the African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic (ACP) group. But, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) through­out Eu­rope say it is not a time for cel­e­bra­tion. Ac­cord­ing to a joint state­ment is­sued by many of the NGOs, "Ten years on, EPA ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue to be fraught with con­cerns that, far from sup­port­ing de­vel­op­ment ef­forts and pro­mot­ing re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, will do more harm than good". This an­niver­sary has prompt­ed protests in Brus­sels, the lo­ca­tion of the EU head­quar­ters, and in oth­er Eu­ro­pean cap­i­tals, no­tably Lon­don where demon­stra­tions were held out­side the min­istry of UK Busi­ness Sec­re­tary Vince Ca­ble, call­ing on him to keep his promise to make trade work for de­vel­op­ment and mak­ing spe­cif­ic de­mands re­gard­ing EPAs.

A let­ter was de­liv­ered to Ca­ble, signed by lead­ers of 18 pow­er­ful Unit­ed King­dom or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing the Trade Jus­tice Move­ment, the Trades Union Con­gress, the Fair­trade Foun­da­tion, the Na­tion­al Union of Teach­ers; and the War On Want. Apart from be­ing the tenth an­niver­sary of the be­gin­ning of the ne­go­ti­a­tions on the EPAs, the sig­nif­i­cance of the protests in Eu­rope by Eu­ro­pean-based or­gan­i­sa­tions on be­half of the ACP coun­tries, is that the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion is propos­ing to with­draw du­ty-free and quo­ta-free mar­ket ac­cess for key ex­ports of those ACP coun­tries which have not signed EPAs. African coun­tries have been strongest in re­sist­ing sign­ing-up to EU's EPA ap­proach which they don't be­lieve works in the in­ter­est of their eco­nom­ic fu­ture. Hence, the big-stick tac­tic by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion.

The com­mis­sion is clear­ly bar­gain­ing that those coun­tries that have so far held out from sign­ing the EPA will do so now sim­ply to safe­guard their tra­di­tion­al ex­ports. The com­mis­sion has good rea­son for their think­ing. Threats worked in the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the 15 Caribbean mem­bers of the ACP that signed a "full EPA" in 2008. In the pre­vi­ous year, the com­mis­sion's ne­go­tia­tors threat­ened that if Caribbean coun­tries did not sign-up to the EPA, the EU would raise its im­port tar­iffs on cer­tain key Caribbean ex­ports mak­ing them un­com­pet­i­tive in the EU mar­ket. This would have led to un­em­ploy­ment as well as rev­enue loss­es that Caribbean gov­ern­ments could not face. Even the most re­luc­tant gov­ern­ments signed.

No great ad­van­tage to EPA

How­ev­er, Caribbean coun­tries did not have to sign-up to a full EPA which went be­yond an agree­ment that would have been com­pat­i­ble with World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) rules. But, some gov­ern­ments ac­cept­ed the promise that the full EPA would open the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket to Caribbean ser­vices. Of course, five years lat­er, this has not hap­pened in any mean­ing­ful way. Mean­while, un­der the full EPA Caribbean gov­ern­ments gave the EU com­mit­ments on ser­vices, com­pe­ti­tion, pro­cure­ment and trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion that are still to be set­tled as glob­al rules in the WTO, but which the EU want­ed to es­tab­lish not on­ly for the Caribbean, but al­so as a prece­dent for ne­go­ti­a­tions with the more im­por­tant and lu­cra­tive mar­kets of Africa.

As it has turned out, no Caribbean coun­try has de­rived any great ad­van­tages from the full EPA; they have con­tin­ued to re­ly on the Coto­nou Agree­ment that was signed in 2000 and ex­pires in 2020. In­deed, the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence of the EPA is that sev­er­al gov­ern­ments have not im­ple­ment­ed their com­mit­ments to re­move tar­iffs on EU im­ports ac­cord­ing to an agreed sched­ule and each of them is now at risk of be­ing tak­en to ar­bi­tra­tion by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion. Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to need the rev­enues from tar­iffs on Eu­ro­pean im­ports in the face of high debt, and bud­get and trade deficits. And, in the case of the gov­ern­ments that have im­ple­ment­ed their com­mit­ments to re­move tar­iffs on a num­ber of EU goods mak­ing them cheap­er, a num­ber of lo­cal com­pa­nies have found them­selves un­able to com­pete. The promised open­ing of the doors to the EU for Caribbean goods and ser­vices has al­so not ma­te­ri­alised as much from a lack of in­formed ef­fort by Caribbean com­pa­nies as from blocks at the na­tion­al lev­el in many Eu­ro­pean coun­tries.

Against the back­ground of the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence with the EPA, African coun­tries are jus­ti­fied in not want­i­ng to sign with­out sig­nif­i­cant changes. Dot Keet, a long-time trade ac­tivist in South­ern Africa, said: "Eu­rope's trade ne­go­ti­a­tions are un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and the agree­ments are un­just. "As part of a flawed glob­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem, the cur­rent trade regime is fu­elling the food, eco­nom­ic and cli­mate crises fac­ing Eu­rope and the world. In that con­text, African and oth­er coun­tries can­not sign long-term agree­ments that set their poli­cies in stone be­cause they can't know in ad­vance what poli­cies they will need to deal with these loom­ing prob­lems."

Con­tentious is­sues

The pro­pos­al by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion-to with­draw du­ty-free and quo­ta-free mar­ket ac­cess for key ex­ports of ACP coun­tries that have not signed EPAs-has to go to the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil for agree­ment be­fore it can be im­ple­ment­ed. This is why the protests in Brus­sels and the let­ter hand­ed to the UK Busi­ness Min­is­ter Vince Ca­ble by the 18 British NGO's are so im­por­tant. The let­ter urges Ca­ble not to ac­cept the pro­pos­al when it comes be­fore the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil and to en­sure that the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion "re­spects on­go­ing dis­cus­sions about out­stand­ing con­tentious is­sues and un­der no cir­cum­stances forces coun­tries to rat­i­fy un-amend­ed in­ter­im eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship agree­ments."

What is strik­ing about these her­culean ef­forts by lead­ing Eu­ro­pean NGO's to de­fend ACP states and their peo­ple, and to in­flu­ence the de­ci­sions of their gov­ern­ments on the EPAs, is that there are no cor­re­spond­ing mass ac­tions in ACP coun­tries by NGO's and oth­ers to get the mes­sage of dis­ap­point­ment home to EU gov­ern­ments. In part, this is be­cause ACP gov­ern­ments have not in­formed their civ­il so­ci­ety and-in some cas­es, not even their par­lia­ments-about the EPAs and the de­mands of the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion in these ne­go­ti­a­tions. All ACP gov­ern­ments should be stand­ing up for fair EPAs, and right now they should be stand­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with Africa.

The writer is a con­sul­tant and for­mer Caribbean diplo­mat.


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