Useful debate but differences persist. Last week the purpose and meaning of the ACP/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly appeared in full light. In Ljubljana, MEPs from the two parties explained that 'officialese' often only hid or implied things. Difficulties and divergences have been confirmed but it is still preferable to know about them and understand them rather than pretend they aren't there. The big media channels have certainly not given much time to the sterile and insipid debates and press releases from the secretariat, but readers of Agence EUROPE have been provided with the clarifying and comprehensive reports of Aminata Niang.
The first aspect suggests to me that a rethink or two is required with regard to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA). There are still deep-seated divergences but we can see more clearly. Participants in the debate exchanged arguments instead of the previous excommunications and denunciations. We know that a geographical line divides the opposing positions: EPAs are criticised by both African parliamentarians and some MEPs, but they are also supported by the European Commission and certain ACP states which have definitively initialled them.
Louis Michel reaffirmed that in this affair, the EU is defending the interests of African countries and not its own interests. They need political and economic governance to attain a reasonable level of competitiveness and have to create dynamic and viable regional markets that are investment-friendly and which make product diversification profitable. EPAs, in his opinion, are development instruments. Trade integration (regional and with the EU) definitely involves the disappearance of customs revenue but the EU will compensate losses with generous subsidies.
The sometimes very sharp criticism was levelled at both the way in which the Commission negotiates (based on political pressure and sometimes, according to certain observers, blackmail) and the content: EPAs have provoked the disintegration of sometimes incredibly old regional groupings because some countries from the same group have signed up to the provisional agreements, while others have rejected them, resulting in the creation of new trade barriers between African countries themselves.
Principled accusations have been added to sectoral misunderstandings, especially with regard to agricultural trade. Some ACP countries appear to place more importance on exports to the European market than on re-establishing subsistence farming in their own countries that would allow them to rediscover a reasonable level of food self-sufficiency, the real priority objective. Fortunately, a specific resolution on food safety has reset the balance by indicating self-sufficiency as a priority in relation to the trade in food products (see our bulletin yesterday). Selective emigration was also mentioned: if Europe opens its doors to skilled labour, poor countries lose the fruit of their efforts in training doctors and technicians etc.
Tough negotiations. Overall, there is no compromise on EPAs in sight. Most ACP countries are calling for the extension of the preferential trade regime, without the obligatory reciprocity, whereas the EU cannot ignore its obligations to the WTO. The debate at Ljubljana, however, allowed for greater mutual understanding and helped launch negotiations in the direction of a global development policy of which trade will only be one aspect. This involves a change in orientation and also, according to several parliamentarians, a change in personnel: several African countries, also supported by MEPs, prefer to negotiate the future with Louis Michel and his team rather than with Peter Mandelson. The fact that the latter has never addressed the Joint Assembly has antagonised several parliamentarians, which they have not attempted to hide. The denunciations levelled against the EPAs, such as the one by the League for Human Rights (whose role is indisputable when it attacks human rights abuses but which loses credibility when it strays into a partisan doctrinal debate), appears to have come to an end to the benefit of more tranquil negotiations. The European Commission, however, appears to have forgotten the request by several parliamentarians to take into consideration the possibility of revising certain aspects of the already initialled interim agreements.
We should not create any illusions for ourselves: divergences persist and they are serious ones. The outcome of the EPAs remains uncertain and with them, the very direction of future relations between the EU and Africa. Tomorrow I will return to the general reasons underpinning these perplexing aspects.
(F.R.)