Brussels, 02/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Union and the six regions from the ACP group (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific), struggling to negotiate economic partnership agreements (EPAs) which comply with multilateral trade rules, committed themselves, in Brussels on 1 March, to sign within the set deadline - 31 December 2007 - EPAs which will promote the development of the ACP countries and their gradual integration into the world economy, as they are supposed to be.
That is the main outcome for the joint ministerial committee meeting held in its extended form - with two ministers from each of the 78 ACP countries, EU member state representatives and the appropriate European commissioners, Peter Mandelson for Trade and Louis Michel for Development (see EUROPE 9375) - in Brussels on 1 March. Let no one be fooled, however, the united front on the need to speed things up so as to reach a conclusion in time is far from indicating that the negotiators' worries are over. The agreement is conditional on the exact content of the development dimension of these EPAs, negotiated under the Cotonou Agreement to put in place, with effect from 1 January 2008, a more open trade system than the system of unilateral trade preferences which the ACP countries enjoy as their access to the European market, as a result of a WTO derogation.
The stated common desire is to complete the difficult preparatory work on trade liberalisation - reciprocal but necessarily asymmetrical between a group of developed countries and regions of developing countries - but each of the partners is concerned mainly with what is important to itself. The Commission has welcomed the commitment shown by the six ACP regions (Western Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa - including South Africa - Southern and Eastern Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific) to sign within the timescale - something that is seen as essential since the WTO derogation expires on 31 December. The ACP states welcome the assurance received, that account will be taken of their concerns, duly expresses by the ACP Council (se EUROPE 9377), relating to financial resources for heir adjustment to the new order and the implementation of the EPAs, the speed and scope of the liberalisation, the right of ACP regions to exclude services and the Singapore questions.
Unlike the Caribbean, which wants as ambitious an EPA as possible, West Africa, East and Southern Africa are refusing to consider offering the EU anything they refused to offer at the WTO.
No joint statements or common press conferences were forthcoming after the trade ministers' meeting, bearing witness to the controversy surrounding the issue and the sheer importance of the negotiations, now in their final stage.
Hans Joachim Keil, deputy minister for trade, industry, labour and trade negotiations for Samoa (the South Pacific), told a handful of reporters that the ministers had agreed there would be no new derogations to WTO rules and it should therefore be possible to conclude the talks on schedule. He said this should not prove impossible if the EPAs served the development interests of the ACP states and were based on differentiation among the different regions.
We agreed on a series of points which are a kind of prior agreement before the signing of the EPAs, explained Adelaide Moundele-Ngollo, trade, consumer issues and supplies minister for Congo Brazzaville. She said it was an agreement in principle, on condition that the EU met the concerns expressed by the ACPs. She told our newsletter that this applied in particular to funding for the EPAs. At present, the European Commission foresees European Development Fund resources (two billion euros is earmarked for regional integration in the tenth EDF, Ed.) but the ACPs want specific measures totally different from the long, inefficient and unsuitable EDF mechanisms. She added that the EU had assured the ACP that it would meet this demand if the ACPs guaranteed that they would sign the agreements on schedule. She said that the ACP demand would be met through additional resources from EU Member States and the creation of EPA regional support funds in the different regions. Adelaide Moundele-Ngollo was delighted that after initial opposition from the Commission, the idea of an EPA support fund, separate from the EDF, had been accepted. ACP states are keen to see the EU's offer, last October, of EUR 2 bn a year for trade aid, put into practice.
Adelaide Moundele-Ngollo explained that at the 'All ACP' level, the ACP countries had insisted that the EPAs must be development instruments for all the sub-regions because ACPs did not have sufficient capacity. Capacity would have to be increased through the establishment of infrastructure, upgrading the economy and boosting the competitiveness of ACP companies. She said that if the EU put what had been foreseen on the table, it would be possible to sign on 31 December 2007, adding that the ACP states had reaffirmed their attachment to the EPAs.
Before this crucial meeting, Karl Friedrich Falkenberg, Deputy Director General at DG Trade at the European Commission, told reporters that the ACP regions' go-ahead would make it possible to get down to brass tacks in the negotiations, namely market access and trade rules, to write the Cotonou Accord's new trade chapter. The initial priority for the EPAs is to develop huge integrated ACP markets with more predictable, harmonised rules to both encourage business and South-South trade and to attract new investment. Reciprocity with EU trade would not be introduced until the next stage, he explained. The EU wants to provide the widest market access by offering almost an 'All but Arms' package to every country, he added, noting that the details would now be thrashed out. Falkenberg said he was prepared to be highly flexible on the opening of ACP markets, noting that there were good reasons to protect some sectors for a while to allow them to develop and become more competitive. Market opening would be gradual to respect the development dimension of the EPAs, he insisted.
Stefano Manservici, Director General at DG Development at the European Commission, insisted that from the start, development had been played against trade but the EU argued the opposite. EPAs, he said, were one of the greatest opportunities available to the ACPs and he wanted to help the ACPs position themselves better in the global economy by starting with a trade system with the EU with the aim of ensuring trade was at the service of development. He suggested considering the huge costs of lack of integration in Africa. The process of opening ACP markets would take twenty to twenty-five years, he said. The trade preference system no longer worked, added Manservici, so it would be much better for the ACPs to consolidate trade in goods and services among themselves in an ACP framework, for the ACPs to establish a framework for services and investment and for the EU to help them in the reform process. He said the changes of winning a new derogation at the WTO were extremely slim and it would therefore be better to secure ACP-EU trade relations by organising transition within an EPA to protect against WTO attacks and stipulating, where necessary, that liberalisation would not start for another three years.
Negotiators on both sides will now have to work out how to respect the pledges they have made in the interests of both sides. (an)