3-4 November EU-ACP Council

Date: 09/11/1995

FINANCE and foreign ministers from 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations and their European Union counterparts signed an economic protocol worth 12.8 billion ecu. The protocol, the Union's eighth European Development Fund, will be joined by other funding for a total of 14.7 billion ecu which can be handed out to the ACPs in instalments over the next five years through the EU's Lomé Convention. Aid from 1990 to 1995 totalled to nearly 12 billion ecu.

THE new protocol contains major trade concessions including access to EU markets for ACP agricultural products. Through the Lomé Convention, ACP states had unparalleled trading privileges with the Union, but multilateral trade agreements struck by the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) have eroded those privileges, prompting ACP states to call for extra trade concessions.

AID to ACP states is now directly linked to good governance, democracy and the rule of law. The new protocol also contains a clause allowing EU partners to freeze both aid and trade with an ACP state where human rights are violated. Previous protocols had no binding human rights or democratic conditions, and EU states have been pushing for them during the last few years.

MAURITIUS Prime Minister Anerood Jugnaut, host of the 86-nation meeting, proposed to ACP states that they organise a joint summit, where heads of state and government could decide how to get the most from cooperation with the EU. Sir Anerood said EU-ACP relations were at a turning point and warned Europeans not to let their decreasing interest in the southern hemisphere erode the EU-ACP ties.

ACP states will ask the EU not to revise current standards on chocolate production. They oppose a drive by Denmark, Ireland and the UK to extend their right to substitute up to 5&percent; of cocoa butter with vegetable fat in chocolate throughout the EU. ACP states say that would reduce demand for cocoa beans by 200,000 tonnes and could destroy the economies of several ACP nations.

BANANA import policy must also be revised, ACP states said. While EU states had promised to consume the bananas exported by their Lomé partners, they are importing so many non-ACP bananas that the surplus is causing prices to fall in ACP producing countries. ACP members asked the EU to resist pressure being applied by American banana exporters.