John Bazill, an of­fi­cial re­spon­si­ble for trade re­la­tions with the Caribbean in the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion’s Trade De­part­ment, is en­cour­ag­ing T&T to rat­i­fy the long-out­stand­ing Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment (EPA) with the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Speak­ing in Brus­sels dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week, Bazill ex­pressed con­cern over the pro­longed de­lay in T&T’s rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the trade agree­ment, which was signed more than a decade ago un­der the Car­i­fo­rum-EU frame­work.

“Many years af­ter the agree­ment was ne­go­ti­at­ed and signed, Trinidad and To­ba­go still hasn’t rat­i­fied it” Bazill said. He added that while the EU has ful­filled its side of the deal—in­clud­ing low­er­ing tar­iffs for goods from T&T - it ex­pects rec­i­p­ro­cal ac­tion, in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al norms.

“For the EU, we’ve done our part of the deal, we’ve low­ered our tar­iffs for Trinidad and To­ba­go prod­ucts. We’d re­al­ly like Trinidad and To­ba­go to join oth­er Car­i­fo­rum coun­tries in rat­i­fy­ing the agree­ment.”

The EPA is a trade and de­vel­op­ment agree­ment de­signed to pro­mote trade, in­vest­ment, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment be­tween the EU and Car­i­fo­rum states (Cari­com states (ex­cept for Montser­rat) plus the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. It is be­ing pro­vi­sion­al­ly ap­plied un­til all par­ties have rat­i­fied it. Most sig­na­to­ry Caribbean coun­tries have al­ready rat­i­fied the agree­ment, though all are ac­tive­ly ben­e­fit­ting from du­ty-free and quo­ta-free ac­cess to EU mar­kets.

Bazill al­so not­ed that the red-list­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s seafood ex­ports to the EU ham­pers the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to tap in­to lu­cra­tive Eu­ro­pean mar­kets. In con­trast, sev­er­al re­gion­al neigh­bours meet EU reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments and are cur­rent­ly ex­port­ing seafood and fish prod­ucts to the bloc.

“Tak­ing in­to ac­count the need for Trinidad and To­ba­go to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my, the fact that you’re an is­land, you have fish­eries, I would say it would be a pri­or­i­ty to work with our Di­rec­torate Gen­er­al re­spon­si­ble for fish­eries and mar­itime af­fairs to do the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal and le­gal work,” he ad­vised.

Bazill em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of up­dat­ing na­tion­al fish­eries leg­is­la­tion and align­ing it to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards to boost con­fi­dence among Eu­ro­pean buy­ers.

“That would mean that Eu­ro­pean buy­ers would be much more in­ter­est­ed in buy­ing fish­ery prod­ucts from Trinidad and To­ba­go. And as you men­tioned, some of your neigh­bours are al­ready ex­port­ing seafood and fish­ery prod­ucts to the EU, so why not Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so?” he said.

The di­rec­tor of the Eu­ro­pean Busi­ness Cham­ber in Trinidad and To­ba­go (EU­ROCHAMTT), Marie Louise Nor­ton-Mur­ray, al­so called on T&T to ful­fill its oblig­a­tions un­der the EPA with the Eu­ro­pean Union, warn­ing that fail­ure to do so is cost­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es ac­cess to new mar­kets and much-need­ed in­vest­ment.

Nor­ton said the EPA, which was signed by all 15 Car­i­fo­rum mem­bers in 2008 and adopt­ed in­to T&T’s laws in 2013, re­mains on­ly par­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed. While the EU has al­ready grant­ed full du­ty-free, quo­ta-free ac­cess to Car­i­fo­rum coun­tries, she not­ed that T&T has yet to meet some of its key com­mit­ments, in­clud­ing tar­iff re­duc­tions on EU im­ports.

“We are al­so of the view that if you sign an agree­ment, yes, and you are work­ing with a part­ner and that part­ner is pro­vid­ing a lot of de­vel­op­ment sup­port, that you, on your end, you should al­so meet what you have agreed to,” Nor­ton stat­ed.

Nor­ton al­so ar­gued that many of the goods im­port­ed from the EU are not lux­u­ry items, but com­mer­cial and in­ter­me­di­ary goods es­sen­tial to lo­cal busi­ness­es.

“Not on­ly are we not liv­ing up to our end of the agree­ment, our busi­ness­es them­selves are al­so pay­ing a high­er price for in­ter­me­di­ary prod­ucts.”

She fur­ther not­ed that the EPA en­com­pass­es much more than tar­iffs, in­clud­ing pro­vi­sions on in­vest­ment, good tax gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy, and en­vi­ron­men­tal co­op­er­a­tion.

The EU­ROCHAMTT found­ing head al­so raised alarm over T&T’s con­tin­ued red list­ing by the EU, which pre­vents T&T ex­port­ing fish and seafood prod­ucts to Eu­rope. While lo­cal proces­sors cur­rent­ly ex­port to the Unit­ed States, Nor­ton says the EU rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er and more lu­cra­tive mar­ket.

“We are deny­ing our­selves a whole new mar­ket as a re­sult of this po­si­tion,” she said, ref­er­enc­ing the long-de­layed Fish­eries Man­age­ment Bill.”

The leg­is­la­tion in­cludes crit­i­cal pro­vi­sions to com­bat il­le­gal, un­reg­u­lat­ed and un­re­port­ed (IUU) fish­ing, along with frame­works for es­tab­lish­ing a com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ty to is­sue health cer­tifi­cates which are re­quire­ments for gain­ing EU mar­ket ac­cess.

De­spite broad sup­port for the bill from the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­cates, it has lan­guished in Par­lia­ment for years. Nor­ton said the de­lay is dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and for­eign ex­change po­ten­tial at stake.

Ef­forts to get a re­sponse from the Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry were un­suc­cess­ful.