European Parliament softens position on EPA trade deals
IPS | 21 Jan 2009
AFRICA : European Parliament Softens Position on EPA Trade Deals
David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Jan 21 (IPS) — The European Union’s only directly elected body is demanding that a new trade deal between the bloc and Cameroon should not be applied to other countries in central Africa.
In an economic partnership agreement (EPA) formally signed on January 15, Cameroon has undertaken to remove 80 percent of the tariffs it levies on imports from the EU within a 15-year period.
Cameroon is alone among eight countries in a central African regional grouping to have concluded such an accord. As the remaining countries are all poorer than Cameroon, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are seeking a guarantee that flexibility will be shown towards them.
In a draft resolution, MEPs urge the European Commission, the Union’s executive branch, to consider favourably a proposal made by the Central African governments during the EPA talks.
Under it, 71 percent of tariffs would be scrapped over two decades and the region would be given five years to prepare to introduce these changes.
Throughout its negotiations aimed at securing the trade deals known as EPAs with almost 80 nations in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, the Commission has argued that at least an 80 percent elimination of tariffs is needed to comply with rules stipulated by the World Trade Organisation.
But French Socialist MEP Kader Arif, who drafted the Parliament’s resolution, described the Commission’s stance as ‘‘an extreme interpretation’’ of those rules.
Arif added that EU negotiators have not taken into account that they are dealing ‘‘with some of the poorest countries in the world and that this massive liberalisation of trade might seriously destabilise many economic sectors, especially the most fragile ones.’’ His resolution is part of a series on the EPAs slated for approval by the 785-seat Parliament in the coming months.
Karin Ulmer, a trade campaigner with the anti-poverty organisation Aprodev, complained that the agreement was signed with Cameroon without a proper study on its impacts being conducted.
‘‘Whatever Cameroon signs has an immediate impact on other countries in Central Africa,’’ she added. ‘‘The dilemma created by this signature is that we don’t have any guarantees that the other countries will get a fair deal.’’
Although Cameroon has been classified as a lower-middle income economy by United Nations agencies, five others in the Central African grouping are officially recognised as least developed countries. They are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Principe, Chad and the Central African Republic.
The draft resolutions relating to EPAs reached with other parts of Africa also suggest that the EU has not paid sufficient heed to development issues.
An analysis of a deal reached with Ghana, for example, draws a stark contrast between the situation of agriculture in Europe and West Africa. Whereas the EU spends 55 billion euros (71 billion dollars) per year on agricultural subsidies, Ghana has not given any such assistance to its farmers since the 1980s.
A separate resolution on the East African Community states that the five countries concerned (Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) are in a unique position on the continent as they have accepted identical liberalisation schedules. Nearly 83 percent of tariffs on EU imports would be eliminated over 25 years under these schedules.
Helmuth Markov, the German MEP who drafted the resolution, has urged that the EU allows for these commitments to be altered ‘‘if they prove too burdensome to implement’’.
Until his unexpected departure from Brussels to serve as a British government minister last year, the European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson had ruled out renegotiating provisions contained in EPAs secured before an end-of-2007 deadline he had set.
Others in the Commission have been eager to sound a more flexible note recently, however.
Joao Aguiar Machado, a senior EU trade official, said that clauses are being inserted in some EPAs to ensure that their impact can be reviewed. The EU should be ‘‘careful about generic solutions’’ to problems affecting different countries or regions, he added.
Most of the EPAs signed so far have been dubbed ‘‘interim’’ and have been limited to trade in goods. The Commission has indicated that it wishes to expand them in the future to cover trade in services, as well as rules on competition, public procurement and investment.
But Erika Mann, another German MEP who has been tasked with assessing a deal struck with Ivory Coast, warned that any widening of its scope may not win automatic backing from her colleagues.
The Parliament may only approve such an extension ‘‘in the case of having a democratically-elected government in place in Ivory Coast’’, she said. After being divided by civil war earlier this decade, Ivory Coast had been due to hold elections in November 2008. But the date passed without the poll happening.
French Green MEP Alain Lipietz is seeking a delay from the Parliament in endorsing the agreement with Ivory Coast until the political situation in the country is stabilised. ‘‘If we sign an EPA now, it will seem like we are taking sides in the civil war,’’ he said.
