ACP countries warn EU over future trade deals

Two ambassadors from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states have warned that their countries will look elsewhere for trading partners if the EU continues to ignore their concerns.

Sutiawan Gunessee, ambassador of Mauritius to the EU, and Patrick Gomes, Guyana’s ambassador, accused the EU of contradictory behaviour and said that the bloc could not be trusted to live up to its commitments under the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), which are currently being finalised.

"We might as well ourselves review, not only the relationship with Europe, but where we can find different ways and means for a different type of trading arrangement," said Gomes.

Since it appeared that the EU did not view the ACP states as future viable trading partners, there was a need to search for new opportunities, said Gunessee.

"We also see that there are signs of developments which might be beneficial to Africa - the emergence of India, the emergence of China and also a prosperous assertive Russia might provide avenues for co-operation that might balance the opportunities," he said.

The EPAs are being negotiated with a view to replacing a preferential trading system for the ACP states, which was deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization. The European Commission insists that the agreements will bring these developing economies onto world markets but the ACP states are worried about losses of revenue through tariff reduction and the effects on their domestic industry.

Of the six regions that the Commission is negotiating with, the Pacific and Caribbean regions are expected to sign the EPAs in November with the central African regions possibly following. But negotiations with the other regions including west Africa, south-east Africa and southern Africa are proving more difficult.

At an informal meeting of ministers (21-22 September) Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, and Louis Michel, the development commissioner, said that if all agreements had not been signed by the end of the year some form of preferential access would be maintained for the short-term, according to one EU diplomat.

Gunessee said that the EU on the one hand had claimed that the EPAs were designed to build regional integration among the ACPs but by keeping a limit on the amount of sugar that can be exported to Europe, developing countries would be competing with each other for EU markets.

The EU has also been acting in a contradictory manner by urging ACP states to sign up to liberalise their markets while maintaining constraints on non-EU companies which want to enter their energy market, according to the two ambassadors.

Although the preferential system will remain in place for ACP exports on special products for a number of years, after that time they would be taken down, with states possibly forced to open their markets. This would benefit only EU exporters, said Gunessee.

"The preference on which this EPA is based will be seriously eroded in the next ten years. So much so that there will be no preferences left in the EU and it will end up with the EPAs giving reversed preference to the EU. Where is the logic?" he asked.

Mandelson and Michel in an open letter last week (27 September) defended the EPAs, explaining that they were "certainly not about EU companies and investment muscling into these markets".

"African, Caribbean and Pacific countries will be able to protect and exclude sensitive products and take advantage of long transition periods to nurture growing industry," the commissioners said.

During this period the EU would provide financial and technical assistance while changing its own rules to make exporting to the EU easier, namely on rules of origin of products.

Two ambassadors from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states have warned that their countries will look elsewhere for trading partners if the EU continues to ignore their concerns.