The Endgame of the EU-SADC EPA Negotiations

Despite the World Trade Organization's Doha Round negotiations displaying signs of life with the conclusion of the Trade Facilitation Agreement during the Bali Ministerial in December last year, the negotiation and conclusion of comprehensive bilateral and regional trade agreements by many of the world's industrialised economies, including the United States, Australia, Japan, Canada, Korea and the European Union (EU), continues apace.

In Africa, the bilateral and regional trade agreement agenda has been dominated for the past few years by two negotiating tracks. The first has involved efforts to promote increased intra-African trade through deeper integration within the continent's various regional economic communities and the establishment of a Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) as a stepping stone towards the creation of a Continental Free Trade Area, while the second has involved efforts to conclude Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between various regional groupings of African countries and the EU, the African continent's most important trading partner. The prominence of the EPA negotiations has increased in recent months given the October 2014 deadline for the conclusion of the EPAs.

EPAs, which are comprehensive reciprocal trade and economic agreements between the EU and regional groupings of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, were supposed to replace the EU's unilateral trade preferences for ACP countries provided under the framework of consecutive Lomé Conventions and the Cotonou Agreement, but which expired in 2007.

Although EPA negotiations were initiated in 2002, only 36 ACP countries had concluded EPAs with the EU by the end of 2007, and, with the exception of the EPA concluded between the EU and the Caribbean countries, all of these were interim agreements concluded to preserve access to the EU market. Under Market Access Regulation (MAR) 1528 of 1 January 2008, the EU granted duty-free quota-free (DFQF) market access to all exports from those countries with which it had concluded an EPA (including interim EPAs). Since the beginning of 2008, other ACP countries have exported to the EU under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), which among other preferences, provides DFQF access to exports from least developed countries (LDCs) under the Everything but Arms initiative.

Negotiations towards the conclusion of EPAs between the EU and the African regional EPA groupings have continued since 2008, but these negotiations have not always progressed smoothly and at times have been acrimonious. A number of stumbling blocks have surfaced during the negotiations, leading many on the EU side to question the commitment of African countries to concluding the negotiations, and many on the African side to question whether the agreements being proposed by the EU really will promote sustainable development and support regional integration as claimed.

Source: allafrica.com