NGOs accuse miffed Mandy of neo-imperialism
Guardian Unlimited | Wednesday October 24, 2007
NGOs accuse miffed Mandy of neo-imperialism
David Gow in Brussels
Peter Mandelson is feeling misunderstood. (No change there, then).
As EU trade commissioner, he stands accused of being a neo-colonialist trying to railroad through Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries within the next few weeks.
These will allegedly force them to open up their markets for goods to rapacious capitalist European firms - and allow their services sector, even their government contracts, to be privatised and taken over by the very same firms.
The accusations, mainly from NGOs but also from people within the former colonies, of which 42 are the least developed (poorest) countries, have been backed up by protest demos in more than 40 countries.
Now, in a flurry of belated activity, a miffed Mandy, Louis Michel, development commissioner, and their aides have started fighting back — even though officials freely admit they have lost the propaganda war and were always going to lose it.
EPAs, like all trade and development issues, are highly complex and contentious. But the nub of the current issue is that the EU must put in place by the end of the year new preferential trading agreements with the ACP countries that are compatible with World Trade Organisation rules as a legal waiver expires then and non-ACP developing countries insist this should happen.
If a new scheme is not in place by then the EU will have to fall back on the Generalised System of Preferences (GSPs) which offers less generous tariff rates — prompting campaigners such as ActionAid to rail against strong-arm tactics designed to deny food rights and promote hunger.
These NGO accusations beggar belief. Mandy and Michel, in a recent conciliatory letter to anti-poverty campaigners, said: "These negotiations are certainly not about EU companies and investments muscling into (ACP) markets ... The problem is that EU businesses and investors have too little interest in these markets, not too much." (Can’t fault that).
They went on: "The EU is not steamrollering ACP regions (six in all) into completing negotiations this year; on the contrary, we are doing everything in our power to be as flexible as we can ... It’s simply not true that EPAs will open ACP markets to EU trade at the expense of local businesses and local growth." No free trade between the EU and the ACP "next year or any time soon".
In fact, they said, the aim is to help some of the world’s poorest countries, especially African, catch up on the poverty reduction and economic growth of Asia and Latin America — one spelled out in a "communication" or "roadmap" from the commission to the 27 governments this week.
So why are the NGOs so hostile?
Is it because, perversely, countering poverty in Africa by improving economic growth would put their own roles at risk? Is it simply because of Mandy’s "prince of darkness" pro-business past?
Here the EU is not trying to be a paternalist masking monstrous designs.
Mandy’s aides plausibly argue that Brussels is being ultra-flexible, offering the ACP three options: full regional EPAs, including free access to EU markets; a deal on market access with negotiations on the rest during 2008; and, at worst, GSPs for poorer countries guaranteed market access under the Everything But Arms arrangements (but tariff increases of up to 50% for the rest).
The EU is committed to offering €1bn in aid for trade anyway — not as a lever to force the ACP to sign the EPAs, aides insist — and up to 25 years before liberalisation in sensitive sectors kicks in.
This hardly amounts to neo-imperialism. This time I’m siding with Mandy: the old system has failed and a new one, compatible with the interests of all developing countries, needs to be put in place.
Undaunted, the NGOs rejoinder via Oxfam that EPAs are harmful and the EU is wrongly obsessed with meeting a WTO deadline. They have a champion in general in Heidemarie Wiezcorek-Zeul, German minister for economic co-operation and development and the country’s longest-serving cabinet minister. She was here last week to receive a life-time achievement award at the Silver Rose ceremony held by Solidar, a NGO dedicated to promoting "decent work for a decent life".
Rote Heidi, as she is known because of red hair and leftist views, managed to persuade the federal government in June to increase aid, mainly to Africa, by €750m a year from 2008 to 2011.
This brings German aid to 0.39% of GDP in 2010 — still shy of the 0.51% agreed target under the millennium development goals — but Heidi insists that chancellor Angela Merkel reaffirmed the higher target during a recent trip the pair made to Africa.
"Let’s strengthen NGOs," she says, saying her aim is to try and shape globalisation in a social and ecological manner. "Let’s have a race to the top, not to the bottom." The European experience of overcoming war through dialogue and co-operation is one that should be exported to other regions of the world.
A defender of the German army’s (non-combatant) mission in Afghanistan against Left demands for a pull-out, she says that spending $20 per person per year on aid would meet the goal of halving the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015 — and contrasts that with the $187 spent by each person each year on arms, demanding a shift in priorities.
Fortress Europe?
By contrast, Heidi’s fellow German, Alexander Weis, the new head of the European Defence Agency, replacing Brit Nick Whitney, wants the EU to counter dwindling military budgets by forging stronger partnerships.
"2008," he says, "will be the year of armaments" and lays out ambitious plans for Anglo-Italian Agusta Westland to combine with Franco-German Eurocopter in developing a new €2bn heavy-lift transport helicopter for EU/NATO missions.
The current scheme to design and build 60 CH53 helicopters by 2020-25 is not viable without component help from Boeing or Sikorsky of the US. An ex-deputy national armaments director, the ambitious but self-effacing Weis believes a pan-European programme for, say, 120 helicopters on the lines of Eurofighter Typhoon would make the project affordable — and get round US restrictions on exports of sensitive military equipment.
He also wants to bring more EU countries to work on the current six-nation project, Musis, to develop next-generation observation satellites that Germany is separately considering. "Both programmes would allow the EU to close very critical capability gaps," he said this week, adding that they were vital for the political decision-making process. His "dating" agency, the EDA, could broker such partnerships in his eyes.
This all smacks of the "Fortress Europe" feared by US contractors and Weis is unabashed. "We have to consolidate our own position before we can move to a genuine transatlantic co-operation," he says, calling for common procurement programmes supplied by merged defence groups. Provided, of course, that the age-old European disputes about work-share — who gets the lion’s share of the jobs — can be overcome. Ein grosses wenn und aber.
