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Economic Partnerships Agreements:
EU forcing liberalisation on former colonies
The ACP and the European Commission share a common objective that EPAs should be tools for development, but they advocate very different paths toward the ultimate goal.
Hon. Dame Billie Miller, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Barbados, November 2006
Economic partnership agreements (EPAs) are free trade deals currently being negotiated between the European Union and former European colonies – the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Countries. EPAs are yet another example of the EU’s aggressive corporate driven market access strategy
EPAs are intended to replace the long-standing trading arrangements the EU has had with these countries. Traditionally, the EU has provided aid and market access to these countries, among the poorest in the world, without demanding anything in return – now this is about to change.
Peter Mandelson and his colleagues in the European Commission are of course at pains to point out that the EU is only concerned about fostering development in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Look behind the fine words though, and the real story is very different:
Trade for Aid. In late November 2006, the Financial Times revealed that the EU is refusing to negotiate aid as part of the same package as trade. In other words, the EU wants mandatory trade liberalisation but wants to keep its promises of aid to the ACP countries entirely voluntary.
When EPAs make our concessions to Europe more than we are making to the rest of the world in the WTO Doha Round, then to make poverty history, you have to also make EPAs history.
Kenyan Trade Minister Dr Mukhisa Kituyi , June 2005
New rules
Despite its ‘development’ rhetoric, the EU is trying to force ACP countries to agree new rules that were rejected by developing countries in the WTO talks; such as rules on getting rid of foreign investment regulations.
Forcing regional integration. African countries are in the process of forming regional groupings that work in their interests yet the EU has forced these countries into different negotiating groups that work in the EU’s trading interests.
And this is just the latest in a long line of problems that the ACP countries have experienced with these negotiations.
As part of the Trade Justice Movement, WDM is calling for EPAs to be scrapped and for alternative, fairer trading arrangements to be created between the EU and ACP countries.
Read more about the TJM campaign New Trade Deals: New Danger
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Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) |
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