Brussels, 18/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Ministerial Committee of the ACP group gathered for the first time, on 10 and 11 April in Johannesburg (South Africa), to prepare the trade negotiations that should open in 2002 with the European Union. This meeting enabled 18 members of the Committee (representing the 6 ACP regions: Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa, Western Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) to gauge the difficulties faces by South Africa during its trade negotiations with the EU. From this arises a new awareness by the ACP States as to the need to form a united front against the European negotiators. According to a source close to the ACP group, it seems that the ACP States have understood that these negotiations are part of the logic of economic competition where it is a case, for the Europeans, of defending their interests and not, as some still believe, in line with the traditional idea of development aid. The regional negotiations wanted by the EU could only be a disservice to the ACP States, which must imperatively remain united to be able to have weight in the negotiations, specifies the same source, when noting that the Ministerial Committee wanted the establishment of solid coordination within the ACP group. South Africa offered the services of an inter-ministerial cell, which intervenes in these kinds of negotiations.
The committee selected its President for the next six months as the Jamaican Minister for Foreign Trade, Anthony Hylton. The Trade Ministers for Kenya and Samoa will ensure the succession, respectively as of October 2001 and April 2002. The ACP Secretariat General and the Committee of Ambassadors must now prepare draft guidelines in view of the negotiations. This draft, which will be submitted to the next ACP Council of Ministers (from 8 to 10 May in Brussels), should foresee procedures guaranteeing the proper functioning of the coordination of negotiations and include the first proposals from the ACP group concerning the negotiating groups to be established according to product and service, but also on the horizontal aspects such as dispute settlement.
The first meeting of the ACP Ministerial Trade Committee will take place next 14 May in Brussels.