Policy recommendations

EPAs must ensure that ACP regional groups have maximum flexibility over their own market opening. The EU should therefore offer all ACP regional groups a period of 20 years or more for market opening, on an unconditional basis. Each regional group should be offered this full period.
There should be an effective safeguard mechanism for ACP countries to use if faced with a surge of subsidised EU imports.
The EU should stimulate regional integration in all ACP regions, according to the communication paper written in August 2008 through Regional Economic Communities and member states, by approaching regions as collective partners.
EPAs should be accompanied by additional resources to enable the ACP countries to benefit from trade reforms and build their export competitiveness and the EU should provide financial assistance for this to ACP regions. This assistance must support them in building the infrastructure and economic capacity they need to benefit from trade with the EU and the rest of the world, and put in place the institutions to help manage change and protect vulnerable people, supporting poorer countries with the cost of transition. Developing countries should be given time to build up specific parts of their economy, using subsidies or tariffs.
Investment, competition and government procurement should be removed from the negotiations, unless specifically requested by an ACP regional negotiating group. It is for ACP regional groups to judge the development benefits of any agreements on these issues and the EU should not push for them to be discussed. If included, any negotiations on government procurement should be limited to transparency.
A review mechanism for EPAs - with full ACP regional group ownership and participation - should be introduced to ensure they are delivering the intended developmental benefits.
The Commission should be ready to provide an alternative to an EPA at the request of any ACP country. Any alternative offered should provide no worse market access to the EU than is currently enjoyed under Cotonou preferences.
In addition, the EU should propose within the WTO that Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, should be reviewed as suggested by the Commission for Africa, in order to reduce the requirements for reciprocity and increase the focus on development priorities.

Case: Economic Partnership Agreements

19-03-2009 Second chance for EPA resolution during EP Plenary

In October 2008, the 14 Caribbean states that together make up the Cariforum region, signed an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. Haiti, the last state to sign, has until 2010 to join in. The process of ratification has not yet been completed, but until that time, the EU and the member states of Cariforum will provisionally apply the EPA.

The idea of the Economic Partnership Agreements is to combine trade and development. According to the EU, the various ACP countries that it wants to conclude these trade deals with will, supposedly, not only benefit from these agreements in an economic way, but also in terms of human and social development. This is an effort that the EU Coherence Programme of course supports. In principle.

However, the EPA that has been signed with the Cariforum region raises some serious concerns, because of a lack of development considerations. Instead, it seems that trade interests prevail. The developing countries that make up the Cariforum region are obliged to liberate their markets to a large extent at once and do not have enough possibilities to protect the fragile parts of their economy. This rigorous and sudden market integration could indeed be a huge threat to the economic development of the Cariforum states instead of a step forwards.

The EPA in question is, moreover, an extensive agreement that includes WTO-plus obligations in areas such as investment, competition policy, government procurement, current account payments, environment, social aspects, cultural cooperation and heightened intellectual property rights protection, which are not included in current WTO negotiations and did not necessarily have to be included for the EPA to be WTO compatible.[1]

Now that negotiations have finished and the text of the agreement has been signed by most Cariforum members, the European Parliament has the right to give its assent to this agreement, or to decide not to. MEP David Martin, member of the PSE group and a member of the International Trade Committee (INTA) of the EP, has initialled a motion for a resolution, in which he raises a number of important development-related concerns.

For instance, regarding intellectual property rights and the enforcement of these rights, very high standards were included in the EPA text, and these could easily be used to thwart legitimate competition from generic pharmaceutical suppliers. This would limit the access to generic medicines in developing countries, which could potentially pose a threat to the health of thousands of people.

Besides this, the EU financially supports the transition of the current economic markets of the Cariforum states to more liberalised markets. These amounts can not, however, be a part of the European Development Fund.

A first draft for a motion for a resolution, written by David Martin (PSE), contained all of these points. Sadly, after a first INTA vote that took place on February 24^th, the resolution passed but with such amendments that the critical elements pointing out development considerations contained in the draft resolution were undone. These amendments were so crucial to the spirit of the resolution, that the PSE, in the end, had no other choice but to vote against its own resolution.

With a second vote coming up during March 24^th plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, it is of great importance that these concerns be raised once again. The amended resolution (see the attachment) will then hopefully, after the debate on March 24^th, once again reflect the Parliaments strong commitment to development.

Notes

[1] Draft Recommendation on the proposal for a Council Decision concluding the EPA between the European Community and the Cariforum states. 19-12-08. PE416.606v01-00

Relevant background documents