Brussels, 23/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - Monday, the General Affairs Council could, depending on ultimate compromises, approve the so-called "Everything but Arms" initiative aimed at the total opening of the Union's markets to the products of the 48 poorest countries in the world. This is, in any case, the ambition shared by the Swedish Presidency and the European Commission, which will play on the "reasonable" margin of manoeuvre left open by Pascal Lamy to remove the last reservations that could prevent the launch of the project in the near future.
"Everyone is aware of the fact that a decision needs taking and that the Union's credibility is at stake", says the Presidency. Same feeling in the Commission: "I do not believe that there will one day be the unanimity needed to amend this project", said the spokesperson on Friday. And yet, the Council's "green light" calls for a qualified majority of votes in favour, and the game can still swing both ways. Some Member States (Germany and the United Kingdom concerned at the counter-effect of opening up their sugar sectors, as well as Italy, especially concerned for its rice sector) seem to have cooled down. Nevertheless, the flexibility that the Commission has already said it was willing to show (see EUROPE of 8 February and 17-18 February) and the compromise suggested this week by the Swedish Presidency leave others set in stone (Sp, F, P, G and B), certainly a minority group but were they all to vote together it would suffice to scupper the initiative. Will they have the political will to do so? Answer on Monday.
The discussion will be based upon the more supply methods that those initially foreseen for the transition period in three sectors and over "improvements" suggested this week by the Presidency, mainly: - for bananas, a postponing of the beginning of liberalisation until 2006; - for sugar, transition as of 2006 by undertaking tariff reduction in three stages (-20%, -50% then -80%) until complete liberalisation on 1 July 2009; - the same applies for rice until the total opening of the market on 1 September 2009; - the allocation of zero duty quotas for these two products during the transition period, by retaining the best annual performance recently recorded by the country concerned, rounded up by 15% per year until full liberalisation. Those which form the "blocking minority" refer to above refuse the methods foreseen for the rule of origin ,the fight against fraud and safeguard measures. Moreover, they call for a "meeting clause", through which the Council would decide in the future (2006), in the light of an impact assessment zero duty tariff and quota reductions, to liberalise or not the access to markets for sensitive products. The Commission refuses such a clause and, also to remove these three products from the package. The starting point, is a 100% coverage and we cannot say that we are proposing to do so and then dilute this principal, by saying that we will review it in a few years, indicated the spokesperson. For the Commission, he said, what matters is that there is an 100% agreement over duty free entry, exception being arms, and this, as soon as possible". This is the raison d'etre for the initiative. Nobody has yet achieved 100% liberalisation for the less developed countries. There is no zero duty access in our market, nor elsewhere, and if we approve it on Monday we will all be the first, he added, while recalling what we are targeting in this case - keeping one's word over development, beyond the nice statements of intentions, and to simplify an integrated development within a world trade system.