Africa: Lobbies want talks on EU trade pacts held up for three years
The Nation (Nairobi) | 19 August 2007
Africa: Lobbies Want Talks On EU Trade Pacts Held Up for Three Years
John Mbaria
Nairobi
Civil society groups in Africa have called for the suspension of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries for at least three years to allow African governments to critically look through other regional initiatives they are already engaged in.
They have also called for unconditional debt cancellation for Africa and for the EU countries to increase development aid to 0.7 per cent of their GNP. They made these demands during a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, that coincided with a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) heads of state meeting.
During the meeting, various representatives of the groups resolved to remain opposed to the current policy frameworks that continue to undermine socio-economic development in Africa and to work towards "the repositioning of Africa as an independent key global player and not as a junior partner of Europe."
They also expressed feelings that Africa should be allowed "to consolidate its own regional integration before being forced to open up to free trade areas with Europe and other economic blocs." Further, they want an increase in the access of goods and services from Africa in the EU, the removal of non-tariff barriers and that the EU commits resources to support national food security and land reform programmes in African countries.
They also expressed feelings that Africa should be allowed "to consolidate its own regional integration" before being forced to sign EPAs with Europe.
EPAs are meant to create a free trade area in which the EU and the ACP countries will be required to gradually eliminate tariffs and quotas on the goods and services they trade on. They are expected to come into effect from January 2008.
African countries, for instance, are being called upon to reciprocate by opening up their market to EU goods and services. This will replace prevailing arrangements in which the EU had given goods from ACP ’special’ access to its market without requiring the latter to do likewise (on non-reciprocal basis).
The EU has consistently argued that, when signed, the EPAs will promote trade and investments, remove barriers to trade in services, improve ACP’s access to its market and support the process of regional economic integration schemes within ACP.
It had also "subdivided ACP into six negotiating blocks, a thing that has not gone well with critics. For instance, African civil society groups have expressed concern that the division of African countries into regional negotiating blocks not only undermined their integration but also threatens the ability of governments to "defend the livelihoods of their citizens."
On its part Oxfam International says this had reduced Africa’s negotiating power. It also decries the fact that the negotiations were being conducted in a most unequal environment in that while the 25 EU countries have a combined GDP of $13,300 billion, among the ACP countries are 39 of the world’s 50 least developed countries.
It avers the fact the West African region is more than 80 times smaller than the EU in terms of GDP. "Given these vast inequalities, it is not hard to see where the power lies."
"Why agree to equal game rules when you know the stronger team is already rigged to win?" says a statement Oxfam had earlier released to the media.
The civil society movement is also concerned that the agreements will be signed in four months, yet few Africans neither know what they are all about nor how they will affect them. "In December, African governments will head to Lisbon, Portugal, to sign up to a new partnership with European Union governments. Yet, very few Africans know about this important upcoming event, which will have serious ramifications for generations to come."
On their part, African governments have expressed mixed reactions to its signing. For instance, the Kenya government early this year showed a willingness to sign the agreement with the Trade and Industry ministry, faxing a statement to newsrooms that expressed fears of losing the lucrative EU market unless the EPAs are on course by the end of 2007.
Kenya’s warming up to the EPAs had taken many by surprise, especially because of a hardline anti-EPAs stance taken by Trade minister Mukhisa Kituyi in June 2005. Dr Kituyi said then: "To make poverty history, we will also have to make EPAs history."
But the Government was to have a change of heart early this year when it expressed the view that it needed to continue tapping on the lucrative EU market for its horticultural products. To Kenya, this was necessary to secure over one million jobs and investments worth more than US$700 million (Sh50 billion) in the sector. EU is Kenya’s significant trading partner, which contributes 26 percent of its exports and 35 percent of its imports.
Maintaining access to the EU market is also critical to Kenya because its competitors - Morocco, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia- are already guaranteed duty free market access by the EU under Everything-but-arms agreement.
This positive inclination to EPAs has gone hand-in-hand with a demand made earlier by an African trade ministers meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that asked the EU to "show flexibility and to positively and adequately respond to key concerns of Africa." They had also asked the EU to provide additional resources to develop infrastructure as well as Africa’s ability to raise production and to compete effectively in the market.
What worries pundits most is that African economies have limited capacity for being flexible and might not know how to respond once cheap goods from the EU flood their markets. Critics say that the economic costs of implementing the EPAs are likely to be very high, yet there is no guarantee that the promised benefits will ever reach Africa, and particularly the average African.
While signing the EPA might have its own merits, the trickiest part is that it is not so obvious how African countries might end up loosing. Analysts attribute this partly to the subtle ’coating’ the EU has been using to the entire scheme.
"Behind the herd of acronyms, obscure economic jargons and polite euphemism lies a pernicious programme that threatens to subjugate economies of ACP countries to the needs of European capital," says a report published early in the year in Africa News, an authoritative weekly online newsletter.
