South Africa : SA ’not in a hurry’ to sign EPA, says EU
Business Day (Johannesburg)
30 August 2007
John Kaninda
Johannesburg
AS THE December deadline for the signing of a European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member countries fast approaches without any sign of the deal being closed by then, European Union (EU) representatives in SA are growing frustrated and accuse Pretoria of procrastination over the negotiation.
EU head of trade Jorge Peydro-Aznar yesterday said that it was becoming "increasingly clear " that SA was "not in a hurry" to engage further on key aspects of the EPA.
The EU is pursuing the negotiation of six EPAs. The scheme is set to replace the 2000 Cotonou Agreement, a deal that gives least developed countries from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries preferential access to the EU market.
SA was denied ACP status by the EU — on the grounds that it was an emerging economy — and has its own free-trade agreement with the EU, the Trade, Development and Co-operation Agreement (TDCA), which was concluded between SA and the EU in 1999.
This year SA was invited to participate in the SADC EPA talks in the interest of regional harmonisation. But reconciling EPA and the TDCA has proven harder than expected.
"We were hoping that the presence of SA would give a boost to ongoing negotiations.
"But this has not been the case," Peydro-Aznar admitted.
A prominent obstacle to a swift outcome of the negotiations is SA’s reluctance to agree to fully liberalise the so-called "new generation issues" under an EPA — services, government procurement and intellectual property rules.
For Peydro-Aznar, progress on those issues would stimulate regional integration.
"We have an interest in SA’s services sector and what matters now is that both parties sit at the same table and decide what is good or not for them," he said.
"We have tabled a good offer and hope that in the end, SA will prove to be a constructive, rather than obstructive, force."
South African Institute of International Affairs fellow researchers Nkululeko Khumalo and Philip Alves said that it was "arguably normal that parties suffered from headaches after engaging in these kind of tango negotiations".
However, they warned that the EU’s decision to accept that SA be part of the EPA talks while at the same time keeping a preferential relation with SA under the TDCA would provided the biggest challenge to SADC’s integration drive.
Khumalo said it was unlikely that a comprehensive agreement would be reached by December.
