EU - Caribbean Partnership Agreement is harmful

The European Union (EU) is negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with 76 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (the ACP). Negotiations began in 2002 and are taking place between the EU and six regional groupings of ACP countries: four in Africa, one in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific.

EPAs are being negotiated within the framework of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (from now on referred to as the Cotonou Agreement) signed between the EU and ACP in 2000. The Cotonou Agreement has the principal objectives of reducing and eventually eradicating poverty, consistent with the objectives of sustainable development and the gradual integration of ACP countries into the world economy. It states that the aim of future trade cooperation between the EU and ACP is ‘fostering the smooth and gradual integration of the ACP States into the world economy, with due regard for their political choices and development priorities, thereby promoting their sustainable development and contributing to poverty eradication in the ACP countries’.

The donkey negotiates with the rider.....

Well-known Caribbean scholars like Havelock Brewster, Norman Girvan, Vaughan Lewis, and Alissa Trotz have contributed widely circulated pieces critical of the EPA. Norman Girvan a research fellow at the university of the West Indies says of the EPA "(it is) ..a treaty that is legally binding, of indefinite duration, will be very difficult to amend once it is in force, covers a wide range of subject areas that have hitherto been within the jurisdiction of domestic or regional policy, and which few people know about and even less understand."

Here is a related article in the Jamaica Gleaner;
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080305/business/business1.html

The academics essentially accused the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) of striking a deal with "eyes wide shut" that will, in the end, leave the region poorer. They forecast displacement of businesses and increased vulnerability of firms to takeover by big corporations, while criticising the development assistance component of €2.2 million per Cariforum country per year as inadequate. Two of the academics, Girvan and Brewster, are senior associates of the CRNM.

Professor Girvan goes on to say that "Caribbean countries will be for many years amending their laws, regulations, policies and practices and setting up new institutions to comply with the EPA. Can you imagine a situation where a new Constitution touching many aspects of the lives of citizens were to be adopted within two months from publication of the text to provisional application, without widespread public consultation, dissemination and opportunity for review? The EPA is like a new economic constitution regulating many aspects of our external and domestic policy."

read his full article at:
http://dr1.com/trade/articles/535/1/EPA-Madness-A-Call-for-Sanity/Page1.html

During Guyana´s National Consultation on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) held on September 5, the group whose absence during the formal part of the proceedings was most noticeable, was the Caricom Secretariat. Further, no contribution was made by participants from that body on the floor. As a result, the noise caused by their absence was deafening to perceptive participants. This was particularly unfortunate because the EPA was condemned by the vast majority of persons there, because it conflicted with the regional integration process, and in particular, the promotion of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Afterwards, the gathering blamed knowledgeable persons, in particular academics and the media, for not making the public more aware of the EPA and the considerable number of weaknesses in it, which emerged in the discussions that day.

Asia´s anlaysis
The EPA will have serious implications for financial fragility in developing countries at a time of financial crisis. After reviewing the EPAs requirements for free movement of capital and current payments, a paper by the Third World Network (a Malaysian-based NGO), concludes that "Given the present global financial crisis, and its lessons on the dangers of deregulation and liberalisation, the dangers of this obligation for extreme financial liberalisation cannot be overstated."

The new paper focuses on the development implications of the CARIFORUM- EU EPA because it is the broadest EPA to have been initialled.

The paper notes that there should not be a legally binding agreement for securing foreign investment and investors because this would be damaging to the development interests of developing countries. On trade in goods, the TWN paper also notes the controversy over the EPA's goods most-favoured-nation (MFN) provision at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Developing countries such as Brazil and India have criticized this MFN provision for undermining the ability to have South-South preferential trade agreements without having to extend them to the European Union. The MFN provision in the EPA requires CARIFORUM countries to extend to the EU any tariff preferences granted to other "major trading economies".

Caricom's chief negotiator Ambassador Richard Bernal, said again yesterday that the pact was the best deal the region could have negotiated within the time frame available.
Outside an agreement by December 31, 2007, the region would have faced open competition in its trade arrangements with the EU.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who is the chairman of Caricom's external affairs committee, has also dismissed these arguments, accusing those who have been denouncing the new trade pact as suffering from mendicancy - tied to the concessions and preferences that Europe has given countries like Jamaica.

I don’t buy the academic argument that Caribbean production and service levels will rise to align with the EU. Mu conclusion is based on simple commonsense.

More critisism from scholars (in .pdf format from the transnational intstitute)
http://www.tni.org/detail_pub.phtml?&know_id=176