Pretoria deal gives impetus to Lomé talks

Date: 01/04/1999

By Gareth Harding

SENIOR EU officials hope the free trade deal with South Africa, finally endorsed by Union leaders last week, will give a much-needed boost to talks with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries on forging a new relationship.

After more than five months of negotiations, little progress has been made towards rewriting the Lomé Convention, which has bound Europe to its 71 former colonies for over a quarter of a century.

The EU wants to replace the generous trade concessions which ACP countries currently enjoy with regional free trade deals, by 2005, but developing countries fear being swamped by European imports. They are also reluctant to be lumped together into what they claim are artificial groupings.

Acting Development Com-missioner Joao de Deus Pinheiro said the talks with Pretoria had helped "to identify the advantages and the stumbling blocks in agreeing a free trade agreement with a sub-regional grouping".

The European Commission is confident that the €17-billion deal will speed up the establishment of a southern African free trade zone and provide a "positive stimulus" to the Lomé talks.

" With a successful agreement in place, South Africa and the ACP states are likely to be more receptive to the concept of free trade arrangements," the institution said in a statement after the Berlin summit.

The free trade deal with Pretoria also sets a precedent for ACP countries as it is the first with a developing country and the first to include agriculture within its provisions.

Under the terms of the accord, the EU has pledged to liberalise 95% of its imports from South Africa within ten years, with Pretoria freeing up 86% of its imports from the 15 member bloc over a similar period.