The View from Europe
By David Jessop

Most weeks I am away from home. Sometimes I am
travelling in the Caribbean but more frequently I am
in Brussels or elsewhere in Europe.

For the last few days I have been in an unusually wet
and drab Geneva talking to Ambassadors, officials and
others about the position of Caribbean industries in
the complex and interlocking matrix of negotiations
underway in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

It has been an illuminating and deeply worrying
experience. Despite the extraordinary efforts of the
six Caribbean resident diplomatic missions in Geneva
(Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia, Trinidad and the
Dominican Republic) there is a danger that the
Caribbean’s position may go by default. The reason is
that both the public and private sectors in the
region, seemingly unaware of the finite and far
reaching nature of the WTO negotiating process, are
failing to provide the practical inputs necessary to
ensure a chance of success.

No one would deny that to most the WTO process is
numbing and arcane. Nevertheless, what is being
discussed will determine the long term viability and
competitiveness of virtually every Caribbean industry

Put another way, it may well be that by the time that
the detailed EU/ACP trade negotiations for economic
partnership agreements takes place, what really
matters will have already been decided in Geneva at
the WTO.

To explain: the first phase of negotiations for EU/ACP
Economic Partnership Arrangements will begin in
September of this year but it is widely accepted that
the ACP will not be any position to begin a serious
discussion of general principles until late 2003. This
first phase is expected to last to at least the end of
2004 although most EU member states privately concede
that delays will occur. This in turn means that the
earliest that any industry specific discussion
negotiations might occur would be in 2005 with the
objective that a final overall ACP EU agreement on
EPA’s might be achieved by late 2006 for
implementation from 2008 on.  In contrast the WTO
process anticipates that significant progress will
have been made in most areas of agriculture and
services by the time of the next WTO ministerial
meeting in September or October of 2003.

For example, while the sugar industry, is preparing
for a tough negotiation with Europe as to the future
of the legally binding ACP/EU sugar protocol, the
industry’s viability could be swept away much earlier
in the WTO process. For a number of technical reasons
relating to previous negotiations, a so-called WTO
peace clause on agriculture will expire as this year
goes on. The result may well be a challenge from
nations such as Brazil or Australia to European
agricultural subsidies and by extension to the
guaranteed price paid for ACP cane sugar.

In Geneva negotiations that affect every single
industry occur daily in small working groups, in
corridor deals and on paper through a process of
requests and responses once a general framework for
negotiations has been agreed. This has serious
implications for the future for sugar, bananas, rum,
financial services, poultry, fisheries, tourism, free
zones, textiles, export incentives, investment
provisions and so on.

Despite this, Caribbean industries hardly ever visit
Geneva and most have no WTO negotiating position.
Worse still many governments try to cover the daily
process of negotiations either from capitals or though
occasional visits by Ministers, diplomats and
officials.

The problem is that the WTO process is not as
accessible as other trade negotiations. Instead of
focussing on specific industries and sectors it deals
with general principles and crosscutting themes that
cause member states to act in coalitions that vary
depending on the issue to be discussed.

To illustrate in concrete terms the seriousness of
what is being determined in Geneva, a few simple but
practical questions will suffice.

Have Caribbean governments a clear negotiating
response to proposals in the agriculture round that
would require every state to reduce certain import
tariffs in a manner that would see sudden and
substantial falls in government revenues?   What will
Caribbean governments say when they are told for
reasons related to factory fishing that their own
small fishermen can no longer have their fuel
subsidised?

Where are the positions of the Caribbean rice sector
on agricultural negotiations; the coffee growers on
geographical indications; or the energy sector of the
liberalisation of energy related services. Has the
Association of Indigenous Banks yet prepared a
memorandum for the Regional Negotiating Machinery on
the ways in which the services negotiations may affect
the Caribbean financial sector?  Has the Poultry
Breeders Association identified how Caribbean poultry
producers might continue to defend their domestic
markets against poultry from let us say the United
States?

Has anyone undertaken an assessment of the likely
impact of negotiations in the services sector at the
WTO on manufacturing in free zones? Is anyone thinking
about the ways in which that the region’s tourism
industry might use the negotiations to ensure that the
regional industry is better able to receive a greater
part of the income that presently flows to external
tour operators?

These comments are not meant to be critical of the
institutions named. Instead they are intended to point
to the fact that urgent activity is required if those
in Geneva who have to negotiate on behalf of the
region are to stand any real chance of ensuring the
region’s interests are defended and advanced.

None of this requires an acedemic or theoretical
approach. Rather it points to the development of a
coherent set of documentation making the case of every
industry. This is essential if the Caribbean’s very
able but under resourced and sometimes forgotten
representatives in Geneva are to make a difference.

David Jessop is the Executive Director of the
Caribbean Council and can be contacted at
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May 3rd, 2002


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