REPA Booklet - Stop Epa

PART TWO
The Pacific’s Regional Economic Partnership Negotiations
Key Points:
The European Union’s Cotonou agenda - sustainable development and poverty alleviation through structural
adjustment and trade liberalisation - commits the Pacific Islands to a path that is economically, socially,
culturally and environmentally destructive and likely to increase regional instability and insecurity. In a
mockery of good governance the Europeans are insisting on neoliberal policies, backed by coercive aid
conditionalities, that deny the people of the Pacific the right to define their own future through participatory
democracy. Attempts by the Pacific Island governments to create space by proposing variations within the
Commission’s own framework is a game the Islands cannot win.
The European Union has little interest in the Pacific Islands. The Pacific relationship is a historical relic they
have to deal with so they can reorganise their relationship with Africa and attend to European expansion.
The European Commission may prove less demanding of the Pacific and its pro-development rhetoric
should be pushed at every opportunity. However, it is unlikely to endorse ‘low quality’ precedents that
undercut its negotiating position with African and Caribbean countries, in other bilateral or regional agreements
and at the World Trade Organisation.
A Pacific regional Economic Partnership Agreement is meant to build on regional economic integration
under the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA). But PICTA is based on the same flawed
model and its implementation is already problematic among the Pacific Forum’s ‘developing’ countries, let
alone the poorer ones. The Melanesian Spearhead Group trade agreement among just four of the Islands
has previously run into problems.
The framework for Pacific EPA negotiations is spelt out in the September 2004 Road Map. This set an
unrealistic timetable that was outdated with months. There is no way the Pacific Islands can responsibly meet
the deadline of December 2007 that has been imposed through Cotonou, and reinforced by the WTO,
without taking huge risks whose implications have not been properly assessed.
The requirement to negotiate a ‘WTO-compatible’ agreement draws the majority of Pacific Islands who are
not members of the WTO within its web, at a time when countries of the South are saying the economic and
social cost of implementing WTO rules is too high. This single agreement would mean the development
strategies of the Pacific Islands are effectively governed by those rules for the indefinite future.
Trade preferences have been the lifeline for Pacific Islands’ exports. European preferences have been
critically important for sugar and canned tuna. Losing these would threaten those major export industries
and cost jobs. It may be sensible for the countries that are most directly affected to negotiate these issues
separately. But if those products were excluded from a free trade agreement in goods, it would fail the
current WTO requirements to cover substantially all trade which the European Commission is insisting on.
The Pacific Islands are proposing to include services in an Economic Partnership Agreement, when that is
not required under Cotonou. This risks transferring control over vital services to Europe’s transnational
corporations. A services agreement could see Island governments give away the right to adopt regulations
and policies of their choice in key areas of social, cultural, environmental and local development; Vanuatu
has already learned the lesson of making commitments it didn’t understand during its WTO accession. The
Commission is currently taking an aggressive approach to services at the WTO where it has ‘requested’ that
PNG and the Solomon Islands remove restrictions on foreign ownership of land
A proposal to give priority to an Investment Agreement with the EU wrongly assumes that this will promote
more foreign investment in the Islands and ignores the growing number of international cases where poor
countries have faced multi-million dollar damages suits by transnational companies for breaching such
agreements. This also undermines the strong opposition maintained by ACP countries to such an agreement
in the WTO.
Pacific Island governments have nothing to gain from negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement with
the European Union. Those with Least Developed Country status can opt for the Everything But Arms
A People’s Guide To The Pacific’s Economic Partnership Agreement 43