News and Analysis • Volume 10 • Number 7 • November 2006
EPA Update
Representatives of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States are increasingly calling for an extension of the end-December 2007 deadline for concluding Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union. They have also urged the EU to strengthen the development dimension of EPAs through more financing for their implementation, as well as lower EU demands for tariff cuts and access to ACP services and public procurement markets.
EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson strongly rejects any allegations that development is taking a backseat in the negotiations. Speaking to the European Parliament in October, he said that despite 30 years of unilateral trade preferences, most ACP countries still exported just a few basic commodities and risked becoming permanently “stranded on a shrinking island of commodity trade. [...] The EU cannot make the challenges of globalisation disappear for the ACPs.”
As for prolonging the January 2008 deadline, Mr Mandelson said that it was “politically unrealistic to think that WTO Members would agree to extend the current waiver, and certainly not without a hefty price.” The waiver, which allows the EU to treat ACP countries more favourably than other WTO Members until January 2008, was granted at the eleventh hour of the Doha Ministerial Conference after ACP countries threatened to withhold their consent to launching a new round of trade negotiations.
Commissioner Mandelson also noted that ACP countries should focus on necessary policy reforms rather than “the size of the financial envelope that is intended to pay for them.”
In related news, European development ministers on 16 October agreed to prepare a strategy for the delivery of the • 2 billion that the EU has pledged to donate for Aid for Trade. A ‘substantial part’ of these funds will be ‘specifically targeted’ to assisting ACP countries in diversifying and expanding their exports.