The Courier

The theme of the meeting in Funchal, Madeira’s capital, came from the desire of Portugal’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Joao Gomes Cravinho, for his EU colleagues to consider the three priorities of the Portuguese Presidency. Cravinho, current president of the Development Council, re-emphasised these priorities as:

• How to improve links between European security policy and development in emerging economies?
• How to improve the EU’s role in countries in a ‘fragile’ situation by providing more appropriate responses to the problems they face?
• How to ensure that the laborious negotiations for Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and six ACP sub-regions will conclude by 31 December 2007. How to signal a new trade regime combining compatibility with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) rules of free trade and respect for the development goals of the ACP countries?

The ambition during the Portuguese presidency has been to identify ways forward for EU development policy and to conclude agreements prior to the second EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon on 8-9 December. It was an ambition achieved. The Funchal informal council will hopefully be recognised as a decisive turning point in the European approach to the EPAs.

It will also be remembered for recommending the application of a code of conduct on the optimal breakdown of work between the Commission and ‘fragile’ developing countries and for having launched high-level discussions to more precisely trace the limits of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and EU humanitarian policy, avoiding any confusion between the two.

Defining when to marry defence with development

While army intervention in the humanitarian field can at times be useful – such as the ARTEMIS operation in Ituri in the DRC, and the promising prospect of deploying EUFOR to Chad/Central African Republic to protect refugees of the Darfur crisis and aid workers – there is general agreement that the leadership in any intervention should rest with humanitarian groups. The experiences of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark, all three champions of close cooperation between their development and defence ministries, should serve as an example to other Member States, believes the Council.

Explained Joao Gomes Gravinho, “security and defence as well as security and development are two sides of the same coin. We still have difficulties of a cultural nature in determining when to marry defence with development, but there is unanimous acceptance of the need to work hand in hand”. He added, “this is the beginning of what will be a long process”. Louis Michel, EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, concurred, saying that, “we all agree that there is no security without development, and no development without security, but development has its own aims”. He went on, “The military are not there to do humanitarian work. It is therefore essential to define precise rules of engagement for military forces, without which there is no way of assuming political responsibility”.

Defining these rules is a task that the European Commission has set for itself. Itwill soon be presenting a document for “defining the natural missions of both humanitarian and military forces” and setting out the rules of engagement.

Towards two-stage EPAs?

Addressing the Council, Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson gave a sombre assessment of the state of the EPA negotiations with the ACP regions. The difficulties, including that most of them regard trade liberalisation with fear, are enormous. West Africa and Eastern Africa lag furthest behind and while the Caribbean and Pacific have made the most progress. Negotiations have stalled with Southern Africa. The end result is that none have yet submitted a plan for opening up their markets to EU products. The commissioner pointed out that in the absence of an EPA, none of the 36 most developed ACP countries will be able to count on anything more than the basic system of generalised preferences accessible to all developing countries. That is clearly less advantageous than duty-free access without quotas for nearly all products (with the exception of rice and sugar) offered from 1 January 2008 to all ACP countries that sign an EPA.

Mandelson’s statement was contested by MEP Glenys Kinnock, co-president of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. She favours the continuation of negotiations and the application of the SGP Plus to all ACP States in trouble until such time as an agreement is reached on the EPA content directly in line with a country’s development needs. The active participation of representatives of the European Parliament in this exchange is a distinctive feature of the Development Council. “The only one of the EU Council’s sectorial bodies to give a voice to the elected representatives,” says Kinnock.

While the ministers gave the European Commission their support in helping ACP countries meet the January deadline set by the WTO, they also suggested that it could be rather less ambitious. As Cravinho explained, “It is not a question of changing the date because it is absolutely necessary to conclude the most comprehensive agreements possible before the end of the year. However, if that cannot be done, we must have a general agreement in principle with all the regions”.

That would mean an agreement establishing a general framework, with the details to be finalised in the first three months of 2008. This was Cravinho’s way of acknowledging that the EU will have to accept the impossibility of concluding EPAs with every ACP country by the end of 2007, especially tying up final details on products as well as so-called ‘new generation’ issues (using WTO jargon) that include services, public contracts, competition and investments.