By George Esunge Fominyen (originally published in Flame of Africa)
African civil society representatives have warned that the signing of Interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) between the European Union and some African countries will undermine the fledgling processes of regional integration on the continent. They held this position at a seminar organised under the banner of the African Trade network (ATN) during the 2009 Social Forum in Belem
According the to the Executive Secretary of the African Social Forum, Taoufik Ben Abdallah, there is a risk of fragmentation in Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic and Monetary Union of West African States (UEMOA) as a result of two of its members (Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana) signing interim deals with the EU. He explained that, the West African region was gearing towards a single monetary and economic union to complete its integration process but that would be possible or would happen without these two countries because they would be operating on separate commercial regimes.
A member of the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiation Institute (SEATI) Oduor Ongwen, challenged arguments by the EU that the EPAs would support regional integration in Africa. “If the EPA was seriously about enhancing regional integration it would have recognised and respected existing regional and economic blocks and negotiated with them,” he said.
Oduor told participants at the forum that, EPAs have completely re-drawn regional economic and geographical groupings in Southern and Eastern Africa. “For instance SADC has 14 members: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. But in the EPA talks, two of them, the DRC and Tanzania, are negotiating under different bargaining blocs. Among the rest, four (Swaziland, Mozambique, Botswana and Lesotho) initialled interim EPAs. Angola, Namibia and South Africa refused outright to sign, arguing that the accords would hinder their long-term economic development objectives,” he explained.
The EPAs are free trade accords meant to be signed by the EU and six regional groupings representing the Africa Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries before December 2007 which marked the expiry of the preferential market access of ACP exports into European markets. Due to pressure from the civil society and reticence by some governments, they were agreed by the groups. The EU therefore engaged 36 ACP countries which do not fall with the category of Least Developed Countries (LDC) to obtain new legally secure trade regimes.
It was argued that without a new trade regime, by 1 January 2008, the non LDCs would have had to pay additional duties under EU Generalised System of Preferences. They were made to understand that they faced trade disruption and job losses in key sectors. Huge Cocoa, Banana and Coffee producing countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Cameroon initialled interim deals to protect their interests. For example, the agreement grants Cameroon’s exports duty free, quota free access to the EU market, but gives Cameroon 15 years to dismantle tariffs on 80 percent of its imports from the EU.
The EU believes the comprehensive regional EPAs that will gradually replace such interim agreements will also cover trade in services, investment and other trade related rules relevant for development and regional integration such as competition or transparency in government procurement.
However, African civil society actors used the 2009 World Social Forum to reiterate that governments should not sign them at all. They even called for the interim deals to be revoked by the governments that signed them because in their opinion these are the seeds of disintegration should the other countries stick to their stance and fail to sign up to the EPAs by June 2009.
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