Brussels, 03/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - Algeria and Tunisia have announced that they are to create a free-trade zone between the two countries, in a form similar to the agreements concluded with the EU. The preferential trade agreement will enter into force over the next few weeks and will help to raise the level of trade between the two countries, announced Algerian Trade Minister Mustapha Benbada in statements reported by the country's media on Sunday. Last weekend, the new prime minister, Mehdi Jomaa, reserved his first foreign visit for his neighbour, a country with which Tunisia shares a number of fundamental concerns: security for starters, plus the fight against informal trade, which feeds into the trafficking of weapons and illegal products, and concern for greater economic cooperation for the regions both for youth and the least-favoured members of society.
The preferential trade agreement between Algeria and Tunisia will enter into force over the next few weeks. It will help to increase the level of trade between the two countries, the minister explained. Lists of products will be laid down with various duty levels, including total exemption for between 10 and 15 agricultural and agri-food products.
At the heart of the euro-Mediterranean trade network. The matter is not solely one between Tunisia and Algeria. It will affect the full sphere of trade cooperation in a region in which the EU is seeking to set in place a network of agreements with individual countries or groups of countries, anticipating the euro-Mediterranean multilateral free-trade zone, which was announced for 2010. Although this objective - which was not achieved, having fallen victim to the general trampling-underfoot of policies in the Mediterranean area - is continually reaffirmed in official declarations and formal celebrations, it remains theoretical.
The Agadir Agreement, a cross-cutting cooperation agreement encouraged by the EU, linking Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, was launched in March 2008, but fell by the wayside in the wake of the “Arab revolutions”.
Bilaterally, Algeria is entering into the plan cautiously, but must both open itself up and join the WTO. Libya must wait until the authority of the state has been re-established.
Since then, the EU has changed its position and has launched a series of negotiations for in-depth trade agreements, which feature novelties - regulatory and legislative alignments to feed into a greater harmonisation of rules governing the European single market, the main outlet of these countries - which can be easily undertaken in the framework of the existing association agreements. Aside from the impact of the announcement itself, sought against a backdrop of flux in Euro-Mediterranean politics and submerged in a “neighbourhood policy” which has yet to win the hearts and minds of the partners, the only real novelty would be to bring the partner countries around the negotiating table for services.
Moroccans, the first to brave these negotiations, are faced with growing internal challenges against concessions which would go further than the WTO requires. The country has also raised another case study before the Euro-Mediterranean trading network can be completed - that of the free-trade set in place with the United States, which will make the design of the European trade policy with its closest neighbours even more complex.
One of these major issues will be the trade regime for agricultural products: “The setting in place of agricultural relations has always constituted a specific area. Some of the Euro-Mediterranean trade concerns stem from the risk of reinforced competition between the two sides of the Mediterranean over the same agricultural production (olive oil, fruit and vegetables, etc)”, writes Sebastien Abis, an expert in the region's agriculture and author of the “Futuribles” review (analytic and forward-looking policy brief no. 136) - a complete table of the losses and benefits of the potential reciprocal opening-up of the agricultural markets. (FB/transl.fl)