The Courier

Technical agreements were a significant step in the cooperation between the EU and ACP countries

© EC Photo Library

Sometimes the real significance of an event only becomes clear with the passage of time. For Dieter Frisch (Director General for Development at the European Commission 1982 – 1993) the first milestone event was the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Why? Because the Yaoundé Convention of 1965 would never have taken place if the French, during the negotiations on this treaty, had not insisted on the inclusion of the overseas countries and territories that were then under their control.

Cooperation born of an “historical accident”

In retrospect, we can all be grateful to France for its insistence but, says Frisch, Europe’s development policy is not the result of rational consideration. Rather, it is an historical accident.

In 1965, following the great wave of independence, 18 countries — all French - speaking except for Somalia - signed a cooperation agreement with the six countries of the European Community — the Yaoundé Convention. This convention led to the creation of the first European Development Fund and the introduction of a free trade regime between these 18 countries and Europe. Later, the second Yaoundé Convention marked a major step in assisting African countries move towards industrialisation.

Adapting to the notion of Pan-Africanism

Dieter Frisch recalls that the Pan-African institutions of the time criticised Europe for maintaining and consolidating a “colonial structure” that constituted an “obstacle to the Pan-African movement.” At the Commission, and also in Bonn and The Hague, opinion was that it was time to open up cooperation to some of the English-speaking African countries such as Nigeria and Kenya and, looking beyond that, to the rest of the world. This was the stepping off point for a development policy worthy of the name.

There was a shift, from a policy that Frisch describes as “honest, benevolent paternalism” to a policy based on responsible partnership, inspired by the European Commissioner Claude Cheysson. His basic view was that “The time when we told them what to do is over.” Frisch said Cheysson was famous for saying, “the European Development Funds, it’s your money – use it for your priorities and if you need technical advice, we are here to help you.”

However, this was not an easy call, owing to opposition from French-speaking African states who feared that an increase in the number of beneficiaries would affect the financial and commercial rights they had already gained. The then Senegalese President Léopold Sedar Senghor led this protest, even being prepared to fully maintain the commercial regime of Yaoundé, that gave preferential treatment to European goods in the markets of French-speaking Africa.

The English-speaking African states did not want to give this kind of preferential treatment to the European Community and Frisch recalls that they didn’t like the term “association” at all as, in their opinion, it meant a second class membership of a post-colonial nature. Eventually, the term “association” was abolished and replaced by the ACP-EEC Lomé Agreement, under which the Africans continued to enjoy preferential treatment on the European market, but the special conditions for Europe on the African market were removed. Several developments then took place, the first being the Caribbean and Pacific states joining with Africa to achieve greater bargaining power in negotiations with Europe. Indeed, in 1975, a number of ex-British colonies, from the Caribbean and the Pacific alongside with the English-speaking African states, became partners of the European Union as signatories of the Lomé I Agreement, two years after the United Kingdom joined the EEC.

Lomé brings about a real revolution

The first Lomé Agreement brought about a series of revolutionary changes. At that time they were talking about Lomé “from Peking to Washington”, recalled Claude Cheysson in an interview with the Courier published in 1977.

In Frisch’s view, the most important change was the preferential trade regime that provided non-reciprocal access for ACP products to the European market. Then came Stabex (see article “Trade protocols and EPAs”), the European Community’s contribution to creating a new global economic order. However, throughout these North-South discussions, demand for the stabilisation of the price of commodities was met with ideological objections from those who argued it was not compatible with a true market economy.

“It was technically and politically inconceivable,” Frisch explained. But at the same time, Cheysson’s team wanted to do something.

According to Ghebray Berhane (Secretary General of the ACP Group 1990-1995), a participant in the Lomé negotiations as ambassador of Ethiopia, one of the major achievements was that the ACP countries gained access to the European market and the European Development Fund increased year after year. “That is why the agreements are considered to have fully satisfied both parties,” he said.

Added Frisch, “And the group to group relationship provided a much better political balance - because North-South relationships are by definition unequal - by bringing together both rich and poor countries. But such a large number of countries negotiating together is not at all easy,” explained Frisch.

Finally, the Community framework provided what the former Director General called a “significant political plus-point,” due to the fact that the politically-neutral Community was cooperating with states practising a market economy as well as countries close to the now defunct Soviet bloc. This turned, a weakness – its lack of responsibility in foreign policy -, into a strength. And although EU Member Statesdeployed a policy that may have seemed a little schizophrenic, they succeeded in holding talks with countries and political figures with which they did not have bilateral relationships. For example, the Community held official discussions with several heads of liberation movements well before the independence of these countries. Leaders such as Sam Nujoma, of the South-West African Peoples Organisation, formed in 1960, was received by the Commission in 1978, twelve years before Namibia’s independence.

An ideological shift: the political dialogue

“The third Lomé Agreement marked a significant change in approach concerning the management of financial and technical cooperation,” said Frisch. The Commission realised that results were not always good enough and improvement was needed. But it was not easy to change tack and say, “We are partners and we want this to work, so let’s engage in real dialogue on policies. By saying that we don’t mean ’political dialogue’ in the modern sense, meaning discussion on weapons of mass destruction, for example.” What the Commission wanted, on the eve of the signing of the 3rd Lomé Agreement (1985), under Commissioner Edgar Pisani, was to open dialogue on development policies.

The agreements that were concluded involved reciprocal commitments. That approach was different from that of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which, said Frisch, had introduced “this wretched concept of conditionality,” that came across “like a diktat from outside.” The Pisani team did not believe that reform imposed from the outside - not wanted by the government or accepted by the people - was feasible. However, the introduction of political dialogue into the third Lomé Agreement was not without difficulties. Frisch remembers the time it took to convince a Tanzanian minister that he represented his country rather than a new kind of IMF mission.

Frisch also recollects post-agreement discussions with the former Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu Haïlé Mariam, to convince him to offer price incentives for small peasant farmers, a concept that was completely at odds with the Marxist ideology of the Addis Ababa regime of the day.

Ghebray Berhane revealed how the ACP countries responded to the idea of political dialogue by saying, “you introduce conditionality and that is your right. We are not against it. But you have to have the means to achieve your goals if you want the ACP to accept certain conditions.” In any case, Berhane, like Frisch, believes that the EEC-ACP negotiations were real negotiations. “An anecdote, which Berhane gave exclusively to the Courier, underlines his feelings. He said: “During the negotiations, which went on until four o’clock in the morning, the Europeans had deliberately chosen small rooms in the European Council building which only had room for ministerial spokespersons.

The experts found themselves sidelined. A colleague and I went into the interpreters’ booth next to one of these rooms from where we followed the discussions. From our vantage point we were able to slip a piece of paper to the ACP negotiators. The talks on the EDF amounts and the products to be included went on until the end of the third Lomé negotiations. The EU Council security staff noticed that a room was being used by people who shouldn’t have been there and they almost frogmarched us out. They wanted to get rid of the troublemakers!”, says Berhane laughing.

“Such a scenario is plausible”, comments, smiling, a retired European official who also participated in the Lomé negotiations. “In fact, there is always a moment when the bosses want to talk between themselves. This is common practice when the negotiations reach their political stage. Yet, I can assure you that there has never been any intention to marginalize the ACP negotiators”, he points out.

But Lomé had an impact in other ways, not least, according to Frisch, that this form of cooperation – in particular Lomé’s inclusion of English and Portuguese-speaking countries – had an effect on other cooperation agreements. He recalled that it was in the wake of the first Lomé Agreement that the initial cooperation agreements between the EEC and the Mediterranean countries were made and aid for Asia and Latin America appeared in the European budget for the first time. Claude Cheysson only refers to “the extension of Lomé to the south of the Mediterranean.”

Maastricht: the great watershed

Dieter Frisch believes that the Maastricht Treaty, which came into force in November 1993, was another major turning point. Coming four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the signing of the 4th Lomé Agreement, it was the first EU treaty to include a chapter on development cooperation. But more importantly it marked a break with previous policy. Before the 4th Lomé Agreement, everyone was welcome to join the club, even Mengistu’s Ethiopia was accepted which would be unthinkable today.

“This Treaty also contributed to the inclusion of foreign and security policy into the Community’s external relations and the need for coherence between these policies and development policy,” noted Frisch. Moreover, the second pillar of the Treaty, enshrining the common foreign and security policy, forced European partners to harmonise their actions in areas ranging from security and the environment to trade and development.

This led to an analysis of the respective roles and importance of the policies in relation to each other and this debate continues today. There is a tendency to make peace and stability a development condition and the question remains as to whether military or quasi-military action should be financed with funds earmarked for development. Frisch himself believes that it should come from the CFSP (Common Foreign & Security Policy) budget. The same applies to migration – only symptoms are being dealt with and a “wall” is being built around the Community. But, what’s really needed is to tackle poverty and provide people with decent living conditions in their own countries. When home office ministers understand that development policy can prevent mass migration, measures can be taken to benefit both sides. Development policy, which has been sidelined for so long, must be seen as offering mainstream solutions.