The Week in Europe

By David Jessop

 

Since September, Ministers, Ambassadors and officials from the African, Caribbean and Pacific states (the ACP) have been meeting periodically in Brussels to try to determine how best to progress trade negotiations with the European Union (EU).

 

The majority of their time has been spent on trying to agree a practical structure for negotiations that are meant to lead to economic partnership agreements. Known as EPAs, these are meant to create what are in all but name, free trade agreements between Europe, the Caribbean and the other regions or sub regions of the ACP. 

 

An outline timetable for negotiations has been agreed. This envisages that there will be a one year all-ACP first phase of negotiations. This will cover matters of general principle. It will be followed by a further three to four years of region-specific discussion that is meant to achieve agreement on the detail of tariff reductions and other related measures. These, it is widely believed, will be phased in gradually and asymmetrically over a ten or twelve year period after 2008.

 

Despite this very little else has yet been agreed and there are signs that the negotiations may be mired in difficulty. 

 

There are a number of reasons for this. The EC is fundamentally unhappy with the structure proposed by the ACP. It argues that while it is prepared to accept a general all-ACP first phase, this in their view will only result in a reiteration of the meaning of what was agreed in 2000 and is contained in the Cotonou Convention. Instead, Europe says it wants the ACP to proceed rapidly to the vital detail of the second phase and to start now to negotiate tariff reductions by region. In doing so Europe suggests that the regions of the ACP would benefit from being able to relate the general principles of phase one to the specificity of each region’s trade requirements.

 

Not so say the ACP. It argues that by suggesting this the EC is trying to break ACP solidarity, to divide and rule in order to achieve advantage in ACP markets and to ignore the general development principles that have characterised all previous EU/ACP negotiations. The result is that there is no agreement between the EU and the ACP on what the first negotiating phase is meant to achieve or how it will be concluded. 

 

There are also other fundamental differences. The EU and the ACP have both proposed that the issues to be addressed be grouped in clusters. Despite this, there is, so far, no agreement on how many clusters or what these should be, although it is recognised that all of the issues proposed by both sides must be covered.  Moreover, there is also an unresolved philosophical debate about whether these trade negotiations are about development or, as some in the Europe would suggest, solely about trade. Beyond this, there is no meeting of minds on whether the EC will provide any additional financial resources to facilitate the structural changes in the ACP that will be necessary to liberalise trade. 

 

There is also an unresolved problem over the legal entities within the ACP able to sign an EPA. This is more serious than it may seem as the Commission says it can only negotiate an EPA arrangement with a customs union if what is eventually agreed is to comply with WTO rules. However, the ACP has responded by suggesting that it may be unable to agree this until the end of all negotiations as the geographical configurations of any customs union will be determined by the content of final regional agreements. There is also an as yet unresolved turf war as to whether the detail of EPAs should be negotiated by ACP Ambassadors or the ACP secretariat that threatens to create a new fault line within the ACP. 

 

The result is that there is a sense of frustration among those within the EC that the ACP are not willing to address the issues that have been identified under phase one. Some European officials argue that a moment has to come soon when the ACP has to recognise that either it moves forward rapidly in phase one or accepts the inevitability of phase two negotiations taking place in parallel. There is also a feeling within the EC that some on the ACP side do not have a clear understanding of the ways in which the agreed structure can be turned into practicality. These doubts have been made more real by a document setting out ACP guidelines for the first phase of negotiations that appear to only allow for a very short negotiating period on overarching issues. 

 

The ability of the ACP as a group to maintain its solidarity has also become an issue. It is no secret that many within the European Commission and in member states such as France, would wish to see parts of Africa start to negotiate the detail of region-specific arrangements from the spring of 2003 onwards. If this happens, it seems unlikely that ACP unity in trade negotiations with Europe can last much beyond next summer. 

 

These are difficult matters. The Caribbean and many others in the ACP need ACP solidarity to be maintained, progress to be gradual and negotiations to take place in two distinct phases. 

 

EPAs will impose economic and political obligations on all ACP regions. For this reason, they require the joint strength of the ACP group to prevail during negotiations if one or another region is not to be disadvantaged. Despite this, a number of ACP nations including at least one in the Caribbean and one if not two African sub-regions are beginning to talk privately about the need to move rapidly to phase two and detailed negotiations. The danger is that if any ACP nation or region tries to determine in this manner where their interest alone lies, the chances of any cross-ACP consensus surviving these negotiations may be slim.

 

David Jessop is the Director of the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at: [log in to unmask] 

20 December 2002 

 

NOTE TO EDITORS: The next Week in Europe will be sent on January 10th 2003 




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