22-Jul-2008
foodnavigator.com
Costa Rican food companies are focusing on major trends like organics and social values to build their export platform, as an association agreement between the EU and Central America is expected to be reached in 2009.
20-Jul-2008
Jamaica Gleaner
In the light of the ongoing debate on the economic partnership agreement (EPA), the Jamaican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade has released a chronology of the CARIFORUM EC/EPA negotiations
17-Jul-2008
Caribbean World News
The Guyana government wants more time to consider "troubling" aspects of the Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU. "No Government can be deaf to the outcry of important groups in its society," Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carolyn Rodrigues, said. "We are democracies, not command economies. If our populations do not believe the agreement is in their interest, if they believe it has been imposed upon them, it will not work."
17-Jul-2008
Jamaica Observer
Jamaica enacted legislation for the protection of GIs through the Protection of Geographical Indications Act of 2004. However, protection under the law strictly complies with the standards laid out in the TRIPS Agreement and does not contemplate the "TRIPS plus" and "TRIPS extra" elements incorporated in the EPA.
16-Jul-2008
Radio Mundo Real
Bolivia’s position on intellectual property rights, on the one hand, and biodiversity, on the other, had earlier put a damper on Colombia and Peru’s drive to sign a trade deal with the US and is now affecting that to reach one with "the 27".
16-Jul-2008
Norman Girvan
Analyses the Cariforum-EC EPA from a critical standpoint, including the EPA architecture, what each side gets from the Agreement, the scope of binding commitments, the institutional machinery and the scope for revision of the Agreement. The points are illustrated with direct quotations from the EPA text.
16-Jul-2008
Norman Girvan
The ACP countries, by opening up their markets freely to European goods, services and companies will be transformed into a state of development via an impressive chain of unproven, theoretical assumptions. The EPA itself is replete with development rhetoric and references to the development objectives of the Agreement, most, if not all, of which are compromised by the content of the Agreement itself. Nowhere in the Agreement is there a direct, targeted attack on the basic supply-side problem, let alone binding commitments to put in place a complement of measures aimed at this problem.
14-Jul-2008
Jamaica Observer
While the majority of Caricom governments have signalled readiness to sign the EPA, reservations remain strong enough. Meanwhile, conflicting signals keep coming out of Brussels.
10-Jul-2008
Caribbean Net News
It has become patently evident that the European Union is taking the Caribbean for a ride over the Economic Partnership Agreement initialled last December. The Caribbean has to stop the ride and renegotiate the deeply troubling aspects of the EPA before any signing takes place.
9-Jul-2008
Jamaica Observer
The historic Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) skilfully brokered last December between the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM) and the European Community (EC) is impressively wide in its scope, but the impact of its implementation in countries such as Jamaica is still largely unexplored.
