Regional Leaders Differing On EPA
The Bahama Journal
Regional Leaders Differing On EPA
22 February 2008
Schisms have begun to show in the united front CARIFORUM leaders showed after signing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe before the December 31 deadline last year.
The Journal understands that some key governments in the group are skittish about the final agreement.
Nonetheless, CAIFORUM negotiator Richard Bernal says the deal was the best possible.
"In any negotiations you don’t get everything. The Europeans did not get everything, nor did we," said Mr. Bernal, who heads the Barbados-based Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM).
Reports say that newly elected Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson, on his first overseas trip since winning the January general election, said his administration has some "specific concerns" while supporting the "overall objective."
Thompson’s cabinet includes Foreign Trade and Affairs Minister Christopher Sinckler, who until his electoral victory served as coordinator of
The Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC), a coalition of regional non-governmental organisations established in 1991 to educate NGOs and the general public on key policy issues, had strong reservations about the EPA.
Mr. Thompson said during his official visit to Trinidad that ended Thursday that he’d asked his Foreign Trade and Affairs Minister Christopher Sinckler - the former coordinator of the CPDC - to review the accord and make recommendations ahead of the CARICOM inter-sessional summit that gets underway in The Bahamas from March 6 - 7.
Grenadian Prime Minister Keith Mitchell is also reported to have expressed concern - he said he was hoping Europe would listen to the concerns of the region.
"Our friends (in Europe) cannot say seriously that they are on our side and they are our friends and they want to see a fair global competitive atmosphere in the international community and at the same time want us to stick to something that might have negative consequences for our entire population," he told reporters.
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning and the new Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding both support the agreement.
Mr. Manning conceded that the "agreement is unlikely to be ideal for any one country," but said he still believed that what been "arrived at was the best that was possible in all the circumstances."
Messrs. Thompson and Manning agree that there is need for a "special caucus" that would provide, particularly for the newer Caribbean leaders, an opportunity "for a meeting of the minds" and to "identify exactly where everyone is in relation to the integration movement" and other issues.
There has long been division within the Caribbean over the EPA, which Europe is also negotiating separately with the 79-member African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states, to replace a special export regime for cane sugar and other economically critical goods from these countries that had been in place since the mid-1970s.
The ACP has been operating under a special seven-year waiver from World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules that expired at the end of last year. Countries that failed to complete new EPAs in time were warned that they could face higher tariffs on goods exported to the European Union.
Under the new agreement, the Caribbean will now have to open nearly 90 percent of its market to duty-free imports of EU products over the next 25 years.
The new accord calls for 82.7 percent to be liberalised in the first 15 years and there will be a moratorium of three years on all tariffs except those on motor vehicles, spare parts and gasoline coming into the region. Other duties and charges are to be kept during the first seven years and then phased out in the following three years.
Rice will not be among the commodities liberalised by the EC upon entry into force of the EPA.
But even as the ink was drying on the accord reached between the CARIFORUM countries - CARICOM and the Dominican Republic - and Europe last year, Guyana was particularly vocal in its opposition, with President Bharrat Jagdeo saying it was a "situation we were forced into."
"It was a systematic and well thought-out ploy by Europe to dismantle the solidarity of the ACP by effectively dividing the ACP into six negotiating bases with six agreements; playing one off against the other. Europe acted in bad faith in this regard," Mr. Jagdeo said at the time.
"If Europe supported regional integration through lip service and financial flows, and encourages small states to come together in economic partnership agreements so they can have economies of scale, how is it that they don’t want our products to qualify under the rules of origin that they have established now through the EPA?" Jagdeo asked.
He warned that the EPA could now set the standard for other trade agreements with developed countries.
But the CRNM, which hosted a regional forum for Caribbean journalists on the EPA last week, has sought to defend the accord, insisting that there had been "open and transparent" consultation with the various stakeholders.
The Bahamas has agreed to the goods portion of the EPA.
