ACP-EU parliamentarians call for greater flexibility
The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) should be more flexible and supported by a new fund to boost trade. Members of the ACP-EU Joint Assembly, who met in Prague from 4 to 9 April, insist that European aid should under no circumstances be made dependent on the signing of agreements.
A local farmer harvests sorghum produced from seeds donated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through the ‘Improving Seeds’ project, Nyala (South Darfur, Sudan), December 2006.
© UN/NU
Assembly Co-President, Glenys Kinnock from the UK, said: “Progress in the EPA negotiations now depends on the willingness of the Commission to make concessions to ACP governments and negotiators. It is encouraging that the European Commissioner for Trade, Baroness Ashton, is committed to showing greater flexibility in the negotiations.”
The Joint Assembly’s resolution (whose co-rapporteurs are Assarid Ag Imbarcaouane from Mali and Jürgen Schröder from Germany) underlines the objective of turning the EPAs, which aim to bring trade relations between Europe and the ACP countries into line with WTO rules, into development aid instruments. The Commission is being urged not to push for liberalisation of the most vulnerable sectors of the ACP economies, and the EU should not make the signing of agreements a precondition for trade and development aid.
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The resolution opposes any form of conditionality linked to the EPAs and the granting of European aid for trade and the resources of the 10th European Development Fund (EDF).
The Assembly is urging the EU to provide “adequate additional resources” to support the implementation of the EPAs, in addition to those already earmarked by the EDF. The resolution calls for half of the €2bn a year, which the EU has committed to contributing to aid for trade from 2010, to be used to finance the EPAs. This appeal has been made even though Louis Michel, the Commissioner for Development, declared on 4 April in Brussels that “there would be no release of additional funds” but instead an advance payment of €3bn for the aid budget for ACP countries and €500M to offset the loss of the export revenues of developing countries (‘FLEX’ instrument).
Controversial clauses
The Assembly is also calling on the Commission to allow the renegotiation of “controversial clauses” contained in the provisional agreements, which have already been initialled by some ACP countries and severely criticised by NGOs. The ACP-EU representatives are also demanding that the Commission does not impose negotiations on services when the ACP countries are not willing to enter into them.
A study carried out by the University of Nottingham in the UK referred to in the report estimates that the liberalisation of the trade of goods will result in an annual loss of US$359M in customs revenues for the African countries, with the Côte d'Ivoire losing the equivalent of its annual healthcare budget for 500,000 people.
