The Week in Europe

By David Jessop

 

At virtually every Caricom summit or conference since the 1970s there have been exhortations from Caribbean leaders about the need to rapidly complete the Caribbean Single Market and Economy. 

 

On February 14/15, Caribbean Heads of Government met again. The rhetoric sounded familiar but there was a sense that this time the external imperatives created by the finite timetables of international trade negotiations made vital the need for rapid progress.

 

Jamaica’s Prime Minster, PJ Patterson, noted that the whole international environment was markedly different from that when Caricom first came into life. Globalisation, he suggested, compelled the region to a clear and coherent economic response to the challenges it faced. “We dare not concede to other countries rights of access for the procurement of goods and services which are not available between us”, he said. The solution he proposed was a complete overhaul of Caricom and the rapid completion of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.

 

St Vincent’s Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves, also saw huge dangers if the Caribbean did not rapidly address the challenge, but his solution was different. He saw two choices facing the region. One was a Caribbean absorbed by metropolitan centres, losing independence, culturally dominated and suffering from continued underdevelopment. The other was as “an independent, authentic civilisation which blossoms … within a political union”.

 

These two different but related themes reflect the main strands of the debate about the future shape of the Caribbean regional integration movement. Over simplified, one revolves around establishing rapidly a viable and complete economic union while the other envisages going much further. It proposes the creation of confederal political system perhaps similar to that of the European Union (EU) served by a restructured Caricom Secretariat. That is to say something similar to a union of Caribbean states served by a body with executive decision making powers similar to those exercised by the European Commission. 

 

The two concepts of integration of course are not incompatible. As Europe has shown it is quite possible to move from an economic entity - a common market - through a loose federal structure with a single currency, towards ultimately a political union that will be held together by a single constitution that harmonises a wide range of policies. 

 

Present signs for deepening the Caribbean integration process are promising. By 2004 completion of a Caribbean Single Market and Economy involving Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad seems possible with perhaps other members joining by 2005. The Caribbean Court of Justice will be launched later this year. A regional stabilisation fund has been set up to assist smaller economies. Ways are being identified to enable the Regional Security System to act under certain conditions beyond Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. There are also signs that policies relating to regional energy security and food security are moving forward. The Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery is developing inclusive approaches to external trade negotiations. 

 

But still at issue is how to ensure that those nations that are less than enamoured with the concept of Caribbean political union remain involved economically if political integration proceeds.

 

Here, Europe provides an interesting model for the anglophone Caribbean. It suggests how an economic integration process can proceed gradually but all-inclusively towards a structure that has federal implications. The EU has been able to accommodate nations such as the United Kingdom that have difficulty in ceding aspects of its sovereignty. The EU has been able to embrace new members. It has also been able to move financial resources, with difficulty but success from wealthier members to those with significant development needs. 

 

Europe’s practical approach should have a resonance in a region in which Jamaica and perhaps other nations in the Western Caribbean may have rather more independent political objectives to others in Caricom. They also suggest ways in which an eventually enlarged Caricom might embrace Cuba and perhaps the Dominican Republic and indicate practical ways in which Trinidad might extend its support for less developed neighbours within a regional framework.

 

The other issue of central importance is what will accelerate an integration process that so far has been less than dynamic? The answer may be the shocks that will come from outside of the region as the outcome of free trade negotiations become clear.  

Negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, even with delays, will be completed by sometime between 2005 and 2007. A similar EU Caribbean Agreement is expected by 2008. Preferential arrangements for sugar with Europe may end around 2009 and the region will continue to increase its exposure to the rest of the world through it economic reliance on tourism. 

 

All suggest the need to find rapidly new ways to deliver regionalism. If economic globalisation is not to accentuate the differences between the levels of economic development in Caribbean nations and cause the region to fragment or nations to pursue their own national self-interest, a single market able to respond effectively as one to external challenges is required. 

 

At times it has seemed that progress with regional integration has been painfully slow. Despite this and the continuing fault lines that personalities, nationalism and economic competition create, the political will to move the process forward now seems real. In 1992 the report of the West Indian Commission recommended a new approach to regionalism and the establishment of a body similar to the European Commission to deliver rapid movement towards economic integration. The external pressures that now face the region suggest that such steps are not only long overdue but are necessary.

 

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

February 20th, 2003




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