REPA Booklet - Stop Epa

PART ONE
From Lomé to Cotonou & the Economic Partnership Agreements
Key Points:
Describing the relationship between the former European colonial powers and their ex-colonies in Africa, the
Caribbean and Pacific as a ‘partnership’ fails to disguise the ongoing power relationship through which Europe tries
to dictate the economic, social and political development agenda of those countries.
The ACP Grouping was thrown together by historical accident in 1975 to provide a collective voice and solidarity
in dealings with European powers and to promote a New International Economic Order. Today it is playing a
defensive role in trying to hold back the international economic order of neoliberal globalisation in its negotiations
with the European Union and at the WTO. The Pacific has been a barely visible in the ACP until recently.
The Pacific Islands’ involvement in trade negotiations with the European Union is a legacy of the British Empire and
the incorporation of preferential trading arrangements in Lomé Conventions since 1975. The Sugar Protocol, which
was given special legal status to ensure security of supply to England’s sugar refineries, has made Fiji and other
ACP sugar producers dependent on growing raw materials while European corporations extract the profits.
The economic, political and aid dimensions of the Lomé Conventions reflected Europe’s development ideology. By
the time of Lomé IV in the 1990s, aid funding through the European Development Fund was used to complement the
IMF/World Bank structural adjustment agenda, using ‘good governance’ conditionalities that required ACP
governments to pursue neoliberal policies in the name of development and alleviating poverty.
In 1996 a European Commission Green Paper announced plans to redesign its relationship with ACP countries,
saying it now wanted to make its presence felt in all regions of the world. The new ‘partnership’ would require ACP
governments to implement ‘reforms’ that would radically transform the political and social structures of their countries.
It would also replace trade preferences for ACP countries with reciprocal rights for Europe’s goods into their
markets.
The ACP failed to take the initiative and confront the European Union with an alternative development agenda and
proposals for a post-Lomé relationship. By adopting a defensive position that tried to adapt, rather than challenge,
the Green Paper proposals they bought into a global free market model whose impacts they then tried to minimise.
The primary objective of the new relationship, reflected in the Cotonou Agreement of 2000, is to enable European
powers to shed their historic responsibilities to their former colonies and refocus their energies and resources on the
new priorities of European expansion and competition with the US to dominate the world economy.
The European Commission’s insistence that negotiations must be concluded by December 2007 was reinforced by
its decision to seek a waiver from the WTO for the continuation of existing Lomé arrangements only until that date.
There is no way that ACP governments, which include many of the world’s poorest countries, have the capacity to
negotiate such complex economic and trade agreements within that time.
Economic and trade negotiations under Cotonou are required to produce ‘WTO compatible’ outcomes, further
cementing the hegemony of the WTO at a time when it faces a crisis of legitimacy and bringing non-WTO Members
within the ACP under its rules. Attempts to reinterpret WTO-compatibility by assuming that the positions the ACP is
currently promoting in the Doha Round is unrealistic, as poor countries have failed to secure any recognition of their
concerns throughout the decade of the WTO’s existence. Worse, the European Commission has secured commitments
in the Cotonou Agreement to WTO-plus negotiations, including on issues of competition policy and investment that
the ACP States have steadfastly resisted in the WTO.
The European Commission’s negotiating mandate is premised on regional economic integration among different
groups of ACP countries. The ACP governments failed during Phase 1 of the Cotonou negotiations to secure
agreement from the European Commission on a set of principles and base lines that would protect their interests
when negotiations moved to a regional level.
Notionally, the ACP had the right to determine the shape of Phase 2 negotiating groups; in practice, the Commission
established a framework that has produced 6 separate regional and sub-regional negotiations that foster divide and
rule and threaten to undermine existing and authentic attempts at regional economic integration.
10
A People’s Guide To The Pacific’s Economic Partnership Agreement