Brussels, 26/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - The official launch of talks by European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström to conclude a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement (DCFTA) between Tunisia and the EU took place in Tunis on 13 October. It was followed for the rest of last week with technical negotiations.
Officially, it is silence - just a few statements in Tunis from Sofia Munoz, who is leading the European negotiators' delegation, but for whom, according to Tunisian media, “it is too early to talk of negotiations” and for whom these discussions “will last a while” (but without further detail being given). At this stage, the European side is limited to taking action on the Tunisian position and to moving forward to an assessment of the “specificities of some sectors and to identifying the needs better”. Tunisia is “called upon to set the priorities and define the pace of conduct for the coming negotiations. Our goal is to conclude an agreement” through “a gradual, asymmetric and ambitious approach”, Munoz stated.
Nevertheless, more information can be found on the website of the Commission's DG Trade, which states that “the DCFTA will include provisions on a full range of regulatory areas of mutual interest, such as trade facilitation, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, investment protection, public procurement and competition policy”. Liberalisation of trade in services and establishment, and of trade in agriculture will also be covered.
The cautious silence is also observed in Brussels as well as in Tunis - doubtless the result of how sensitive the issue is. Civil society is pushing hard to be involved. Gestures have been made to calm its fears about the DCFTA, which is seen as a “sell off” of Tunisia's economy. The whole of civil society- including those components of it subsidised by the EU, such as the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network - published a hostile press release on 13 October, in which it was asked whether the DCFTA has become a national stake, shaking up associations, the political world and academia in equal measure. “Disastrous” analyses have been spread around on social networks, which speak at length on this issue. An economist, published in one of Tunisia's main online newspapers, Kapitalis, states that “after pushing Tunisia under the weight of external debt, Brussels is returning to the fray and striving to exert all forms of pressure and harassment in order to make Tunisia sign up unconditionally to the DCFTA. Observers believe that any irrational step by the Tunisian authorities risks liquidating what remains of its sovereignty and depriving it of a few degrees of freedom as regards international partnership”. Agricultural associations are ringing the alarm bells.
In the face of such upset, the affair is spilling over to the European Parliament.
The GUE/NGL Group announces that it is working together with the Tunisian left wing “against this agreement”. “GUE/NGL and the Tunisian Popular Front are concerned that the DCFTA, like other free trade agreements, will increase privatisation of public services, undermine the democratic rights of the Tunisian government and citizens, and facilitate further environmental destruction (…) This project is a very serious threat to the survival of many Tunisian companies, to peasant agriculture, to the development of the services sector and to the safeguarding and development of public services”. The leader of the GUE/NGL Group, Gabi Zimmer, stated: “This free trade agreement in its current form does not take into account the great asymmetry between our economies and does not respect the type of development that the Tunisian people envisage for themselves”. (Original version in French by Fathi B'Chir)
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