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EU urging the acceptance of a modified EPA
Accra, Nov. 12, Ghanadot/GNA – Government
was on Thursday urged to put on the negotiating table
immediately the enhanced Generalised System of Preferences (GSP+)
as an alternative to the Economic Partnership Agreements
when the current trade regime expires on December 31, this
year.
West Africa Trade Negotiators at a meeting in Abidjan had
asked for extension of the World Trade Organisation’s waiver
but the EU is unwilling to accede to the request.
Instead, the EU has proposed a two stage approach to the
EPAs; that is concluding an agreement in the area of market
access by the end of November this year, while negotiations
on services and other trade related issues such as
government procurement should continue till 2008.
Mr Tetteh Hormeku, Head of Programmes of Third World
Network, a trade advocacy organization, said governments in
the sub-region ought not be lured by the subtle attempts of
the EU to get them sign on to the EPA through the backdoor
to the detriment of their future developments.
“What the EU is asking is a modified EPA that when signed by
the countries will commit them to signing the other
agreements on services and trade related issues which they
have consistently refused to negotiate,” he said.
It is in this direction that governments go beyond the
request for a waiver to explore other mechanisms, especially
the GSP+ that would allow the same access for goods to the
European Union market, Mr Hormeku said.
The EU is seeking under the EPAs the opening up of the
markets of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)countries
duty and quota free for goods from Europe in exchange for
the same treatment to products from the ACP countries.
Mr Hormeku said the EU, realizing that the agreement could
not be concluded by the close of this year had been putting
pressure on counterpart negotiators through disinformation.
“They have been sending delegations to different sectors of
the economy to feed them with false information that there
would be no access for their goods to the EU market when the
agreement is not signed,” he said.
"The EU claim that only the EPAs can guarantee this
continued access is totally false", Mr. Tetteh Hormeku said.
He said signing onto the EPAs would trigger severe loss of
jobs, threaten the peace of the continent and strangle
Africa's right to evolve and pursue its own development
agenda and lead to re-colonization of Africa by Europe.
However, the EU maintains that economies of ACP countries
had not seen any appreciable improvement despite the over 30
years of market free access granted them. In other words,
the relationship that was based on preferences and commodity
trade has largely failed to deliver development. Rather, it
insists that records show that exports from ACP countries
had been on the decline.
Secondly, that the current Cotonou Agreement, which expires
at the end of December, is incompatible with World Trade
Organisation (WTO) rules that demand equal treatment for all
member countries and because the current arrangements
heavily favoured ACP countries access to EU markets over
other developing countries they will be challenged. There is
therefore the need for a trade agreement compatible with WTO
rules.
Thirdly, the EU argues that the EPA negotiations will push
forward the regional integration agenda by ensuring that
countries rationalize and harmonise their regional trade
arrangements and in the process strengthen the integration
process and the economies.
The EU said it could not extend the existing system and that
the only legal alternative to EPA, which was called the
Generalised System of Preferences or "GSP", offered much
less generous market access, unless a country was classed as
"Least Developed" by the United Nations - which Ghana is
not.
Mr Hormeku said contrary to European Union claims, African
countries did not need to sign the EPAs to maintain their
current market access levels to the European market.
GNA
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