Mid-term review of the Economic Partnership Agreements
The networks of farmers’ organizations of five ACP sub-regions have carried out their own mid-term assessment of the state of progress in the negotiation of the EPA with the E.U. This document represents a synthesis of the most important points emerged by the consultations which took place in the five regions and it is a formal contribution to the review process as foreseen in the Cotonou Agreement.
They noted:
- the deep imbalance in human and institutional capacities between the negotiating parties;
- the under estimation of the scope of the preliminary reforms to be designed, negotiated and implemented both at national and at regional levels in order to create the conditions for an effective participation of the ACP regions in an EPA (customs union, common external tariff, competition and investment policies, measures to facilitate exchanges, harmonization of technical norms, suppression of technical obstacles to trade, harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary norms, etc.); and, finally,
- the divergences in views between the ACP and the European Commission on certain points, notably the “development content” of the EPAs.
The farmers’ organizations held that it would be extremely dangerous to artificially accelerate the formal process of negotiation in order to close them over the coming months at whatever cost and to implement the EPA by the projected deadline of 1 January 2008. The interim EPAs came in force on time but it’s still interesting to read the remarks of the farmers organizations.
The organization networks put forward four priorities:
a. Give priority to regional integration : the development of regional markets offers more promising perspectives for the fight against poverty and for economic development than does the hypothetical growth of international markets;
b. Define a trade regime based on asymmetry and equity : this is the only way to reduce the gap between the EU and the ACP and to infuse real content into the principle of special and differential treatment, recognized both in the context of the WTO and in the Cotonou Agreement. This asymmetry must absolutely lead to excluding sensitive agricultural products, that is those products imported from the EU which compete with local products in the ACP regions;
c. Improve participation by FOs and other actors in the preparation and negotiation of the EPAs : this participation, beyond the principles of democracy included in the Cotonou Agreement, constitutes a guarantee of the relevance of the choices made in the negotiations and a precondition to their effective implementation.
d. Take the time and avail the means necessary for thorough preparation : it is necessary to implement the regional policies, to carry out deeper assessments of the impacts of different trade regimes, to strengthen the capacity of each region (decision-makers and civil society actors) to define and defend a negotiating position in conformity with the challenges and the interests of each ACP region;
10. To this end, alternatives to the EPAs mush be studied in order to design a trade environment which is resolutely oriented towards the objectives of sustainable development. New impact studies, including environmental and social impacts, need to be conducted in each region, effectively involving the farmers’ organizations.
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