Brussels, 29/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - Beware of bilateral free trade agreements with the EU: that's the message from development NGOs in developing countries. The 12th UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD XII, in Accra, Ghana from 12 to 25 April) gave them the opportunity to set out this warning, supported by the publication of vhighly critical reports on the agreements already concluded or on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) being negotiated with the ACP (Africa, Pacific, Caribbean) regions.
At a time when European Trade commissioner Peter Mandelson made it clear to his ACP interlocutors that there was no chance of renegotiating the interim agreements initialled at the end of 2007 and that 2008 had to see full EPAs finalised (on goods and on the Singapore issues) with the six negotiating regions (see EUROPE 9645), Oxfam International called on the EU and the ACP countries to rethink these unfair trade arrangements before it was too late. That was the key message of a report, “Partnership or Power Play”, it published on 21 April. In the report, Oxfam gives an exhaustive analysis of the texts on the table subjecting each chapter (goods, services, investment, intellectual property) to the development test, and it concludes that, if the agreements were to be finalised, they would cause irreversible damage to the development prospects of some of the poorest countries and would have a devastating effect on their people.
If Oxfam claims that the EU would prefer power play, the reason is that, according to the NGO, current liberalisation agreements deprive the ACP countries of precisely the instruments they need to develop. Oxfam says that Europe is asking ACP farmers and companies to submit to competition on the same rules as those that apply to European producers, without seriously tackling the multiple constraints that bear on the competitiveness of the ACP countries. The agreements, it says, tie the hands of ACP governments, preventing them from using necessary trade and investment measures for liberalisation to lead to job creation and decent means of subsistence, and they give new rights to European investors at the expense of local companies and local general interest. Regional integration is compromised by the number of interim agreements which do not chime with integration efforts on going in the ACP countries. In return, Europe gives very little: it opens its markets further, but the tariff barriers remain, and the additional financial resources are not sufficient to compensate the high costs of such agreements, Oxfam says.
In a fair agreement, as Oxfam sees it, Europe would open its markets to all ACP exports without demanding reciprocity and would thus guarantee ACP countries the freedom to manage their markets in the general interest and continue their regional integration according to their own agendas. Europe would continue to help ACP countries tackle competitiveness constraints, reinforce their institutions, improve their regulatory capacities, particularly in the services sector, to ensure everyone has access to vital services. Europe would also ensure that its companies investing in ACP countries bring high-quality investment, generating decent jobs and upgrading skills, and transferring technologies.
It is time for Europe “to stop playing power politics and to work in partnership with ACP countries” and, for this, Oxfam calls for: - thorough and comprehensive impact studies on the interim agreements before any deal is signed; - vigorous scrutiny by parliaments across Europe and the ACP and full scrutiny of the deals; - the EU to offer ACP countries long-term options for trade in goods, i.e. a permanent unilateral preferences scheme, based on wider opening of European markets (ensuring that no ACP country is left worse off if it does not sign a free trade agreement), renegotiation of any aspect of the initialled EPAs and commitment to reducing the deals to the minimum needed for WTO compliance; - ACP countries to take stock within their regional blocs and make a strategic decision on which route the wish to pursue, fully consulting all affected parties, including workers, producers and businesses; - the EU to agree complete flexibility in approaching negotiations on services, investment, technology transfer, and the other trade-related areas with ACP countries taking the lead in setting the pace and content of negotiations; - the EU to provide additional, binding, predictable and swiftly disbursed support to tackle infrastructure and competitiveness constraints in ACVP countries. (A.N.)