Haiti signed an EPAs: just a month before the earthquake…
In December 11st Haiti signed the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and joins the fourteen Caribbean States that signed the EPA in October 2008. This strengthen Haiti’s ties both with the EU, and with other Caribbean countries.
In their premises, the Cariforum-EU EPA is a North-South trade and development agreement of new generation. According with the legal texts, it aims to promote sustainable development, boost trade, investment and innovation, help build a regional market among Caribbean countries, and tackle poverty in the region. It was just one month before the earthquake that destroyed Haiti.
Previous preferential trade arrangements with the EU had failed to boost Caribbean countries' development. Other developing countries had also criticised those arrangements as discriminating against them, and had challenged them at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). So the EU and the CARIFORUM group of Caribbean countries negotiated a new trade and development agreement, the EPA, between 2004 and 2007. The EPA was signed in October 2008, by 14 out of fifteen CARIFORUM member states.
The only Least Developed Country (LDC) in the Western hemisphere, Haiti before the earthquake has been grappling with a range of pressing problems. These included hurricane damage, security issues, and a food crisis. So it did not join signing the EPA in the 2008-2009 negotiations. However, the EU pledged to work with the Haitian government and other Caribbean partners to enable Haiti sign up at a later date. Haiti proposed adjusting some of its commitments on tariffs and the EU continued to press this LDC until it accepted the compromise. After a month the earthquake arrive, and magnified all the fears about the impact of the new agreement on sustainability and development, as can be verified in the following article. The new EPA is not yet applied by Haiti pending its ratification, which is now delayed due to the dramatic events there.
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