Brussels, 11/01/2008 (Agence Europe) - After the revolt of the Senegalese who took to the streets of Dakar on 7 January to protest against EPAs (EUROPE 9575), it was in Brussels, on 11 January, that Africans living out of their homeland - and backed by European civil society (CNCD 11-11) - relayed the call made by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade that the EPAs preparing for free trade and currently being negotiated between the EU and six ACP (African/Caribbean/Pacific) countries or with individual countries should be rejected. Several hundred demonstrators from Senegal, the Congo (Congo Brazzaville), Nigeria, Central Africa, Mali, Benin - from Africa but also from the four corners of Europe (the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Luxembourg) - voiced their protest in a march against the implementation of EPAs, a march which ended before the seat of the European Commission. To the backdrop of African music, the demonstrators chanted “No to the EPAs, we won't sign”. Slogans brandished carried the message: “to save our agriculture and our industry, NO to EPAs, NO to the programmed death of Africa”. But “yes” to partnership agreements for development - an alternative formula suggested by President Wade for a win-win partnership between the two blocs, based on complementarity of resources, and not on free trade between partners that, economically, are not on an equal footing.
According to the African diaspora, trade liberalisation as suggested by Europe would mean the massive and free entry of European products that are highly subsidised and competitive on African markets, thus destroying the African peoples' livelihood, and jeopardising Africa's future economic growth and regional integration. Protestors stated that the signing of interim agreements last December by several African and ACP countries does not mean the end of the campaign against EPAs, quite the contrary. While the ACP countries have stressed the need to review the agreements “initialled under constraint”, the Commission continues to insist and press ACP countries, including the least advanced countries, to sign a complete EPA including services, investment, public procurement, intellectual property and competition - within a very unreasonable timeframe.
During a press conference, Dr Aimé Mianzenza (Congo Brazzaville) said the stance taken against EPAs was not ideological but intellectual, economic, and moral. Many African countries, he asserted, have just come out of civil war. Their economy is still fragile. They should be allowed the time to rebuild their countries and then to take place in the international trading system, he said. Although many countries of Africa have enjoyed economic growth since 2000, the number of persons suffering from hunger in Africa went from 250 to 300 million during the same period. These people are farmers, they feed the population, and they are suffering the most from hunger. These populations are collapsing under the weight of products entering the country from the industrialised countries, he went on, convinced that Africa is not yet able to face up to the competition of products without customs duties.
Elie Malkor expresses indignation that, in 2007, when it was obvious that an EPA could not be concluded with West Africa, the EU had refused any request of derogation at the WTO for an essential deferral of the date of conclusion. “If we are unable to achieve our regional integration, we cannot oppose the EU. The EU adopted a policy of divide and rule”, he stressed. In his view, the interim EPAs signed by Ghana and the Ivory Coast only justify opposition to the EPAs as these agreements cover issues that should have been previously settled at the WTO. The only way to move forward, he said, is to involve the WTO in debates, and to have the question of tariff dismantling withdrawn from the Agenda for Africa. The Doha Agenda is a development agenda, he said, adding: “We shall ask for the EPAs to be reviewed and for the African position to be reconsidered”.
Given that Article XXIV of the GATT on regional agreements “allows all sorts of interpretations, one can perfectly well ask for a further derogation,” he added, noting that the WTO “was in no hurry to dismantle the AGOA concluded between the Americans and Africa”, without requiring any reciprocity for certain goods. University of Dakar Professor Macodou N'Diaye said that what was new was that “peoples are beginning to take up an issue that had been the exclusive property of those in the institutions. … We represent people who are on the move. Our presence is an offer for dialogue to raise the issues,” with a view to building a partnership for growth and development “to maintain our ways of life, our homes, our incomes, our existences”. He added, “The Brussels administration is not elected by the people. We are calling for Brussels and African administrations to be monitored by executives and parliaments”.
To the Commission argument that it was not about free trade since there will only be 80% liberalisation over 15 years and some sensitive African goods will have a transition period of up to 20 years, the African diaspora responds that 20 years is not enough. “The heralded transition period and billions promised by Europe will not be enough to compensate the trade, economic and political losses which these agreements will inflict on us. … For us, the alternative is in strengthened African integration, in the construction of an agriculture which feeds people, a diversified industrial system, dynamic services, democratic states which play their full role in helping their people gain access to the fruits of progress, and providing education and employment for young people. These legitimate ambitions could not be realised if the trade system which links our economies to the rest of the world does not allow wealth creation on African soil and if our economies are subject to unfair competition,” reads the “Call from the African peoples to European and international opinion”. (A.N.)