The ACP-EU partnership is not really in crisis, but several issues, including the future of EU-Africa relations, have to be clarified, the most important of which are:
1. The fate of the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) between the EU and the six ACP country groups. The agreements in the form in which they have been drawn up and partially initialled have been challenged or rejected outright by several African countries, but the European Commission continues to regard them as positive for Africa (see my column in the day before yesterday's newsletter). If the negotiations fail, the EU will have to apply the same trade system to the African and Caribbean states as it applies to other developing countries, namely virtually full opening of markets to products from the least developed countries and negotiating systems at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for other countries. The ACP states would lose their exclusive trade preferences that the EU has been granting them for nearly half a century. These special deals have already been scrapped for some products (like bananas and sugar), under pressure from competitor countries backed by charities like Oxfam.
The ACP states are not as competitive and run the risk of losing shares of the EU market that they have managed to conquer, but there is still time for the EPA deals to reach a positive outcome. The European Commission is giving itself all this year to negotiate (see this column in newsletter 9613), laying the emphasis on development policy rather than trade as in the previous round of talks.
2. Taking account of real change in Africa. With a few exceptions, official ACP-EU documents and debates are distinctly abstract and theoretical, with echoes of the ivory tower, because they rarely discuss the real issues. Does it make sense to talk about Nigeria and Sudan without mentioning oil and/or China? Does it make sense to talk about Kenya without mentioning the United States and its plans for the future of oil supplies? Or the Congo (DRC) without explaining that it is in the process of cancelling or revising all the unfair mining deals signed since 2002 covering more than a third of that vast country? The whole planet is fighting it out to gain access to raw materials from Africa, and when you factor in the improvement in future prospects and economic clout of the continent, this is breeding and feeding into war, corruption, social injustice and yet more poverty. Spats about WTO rules and regulations seem to come from another planet. I discussed some tangible aspects of this in my column in newsletter 9615. In addition, there is the report by the world Drug Supervisory Body (DSB) that several African countries are the focus of the burgeoning global cocaine and ephedrine (ephedra, EPH) traffic.
3. Radical overhaul of structural adjustment programmes. Apart from readers of this newsletter (of the day before yesterday), who else is aware of the debate at the Joint Parliamentary Assembly (ACP-EU) on the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) hoisted upon African countries in the 1980s? The parliamentarians' resolution calls for a radical overhaul of the SAPs and sets out a number of often courageous suggestions - like systematically returning money siphoned off by dictators and other corrupt politicians to the state coffers of the countries concerned. Listing corrections that global bodies like the IMF and World Bank should make to the SAPs, the resolution also notes measures that the African states themselves should take to ensure economic development. Some countries are developing economically, but others still lag behind and have not made any progress. The resolution also mentions the need to end war and corruption of course.
4. The African Union (AU)'s call for a uniform EU strategy for the entire African continent. The EU has always distinguished between sub-Saharan states and countries closer to the Mediterranean. It is understandable that the AU, which represents the entire continent of Africa, should call for an overarching policy from the EU, along the lines of the strategy set out by the EU-African summit in Lisbon in December 2007. In reality, however, the EU cannot fail to continue to pursue different policies for Mediterranean countries and ACP countries in Africa. The European Commission has approved a document (see EUROPE 9627) setting out some of the envisaged (insignificant) measures: expanding the European Commission office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (where the AU has its headquarters); appointing special interlocutors in every country of Africa, including North Africa and Egypt; and ensuring information flows freely between EU Trade Commissioner Louis Michel and EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. There will not be any new measures in the future, despite the eight 'thematic partnerships' decided upon at the EU-African summit, because a uniform strategy does not make sense given the vast differences in situation among the different countries in Africa. (F.R.)