Mandelson concedes EPA deadline will be missed The European Commission has conceded that it will have to scale back its ambitions for the free trade deals it wants to sign with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries by the end of this year.
While the Commission had hoped to reach Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that would pave the way for the full opening of ACP markets to Western firms this year, it has now acknowledged that its objective is unrealistic.
After a meeting with negotiators from the Pacific last week (2 October), Peter Mandelson and Louis Michel, the commissioners for trade and development aid, stated that at most an “interim” deal will be signed with that region before the 31 December deadline.
That deal is to be limited to trade in goods, leaving open the question of services liberalisation and the so-called Singapore issues of competition, investment and government procurement to further discussion.
Yet governments from West Africa have rejected an offer of having such a deal, which would be designed to make the EU’s arrangements with the ACP bloc compatible with World Trade Organisation rules. A waiver from WTO rules for the trade preferences granted by the Union to ACP exporters will expire at the beginning of 2008.
Instead of signing any agreement this year, West African governments have said that they wish to be granted a legal exemption from WTO rules, so that they can postpone the introduction of a free trade agreement with Europe.
“We will then have the time to continue the negotiations before the WTO can take action,” said Ablasse Ouedraogo, a senior official with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Poor must have greater say in IMF, says new chief The new head of the International Monetary Fund has admitted that the tacit trans-Atlantic accord guaranteeing the top job in his institution to a European nominee must end.
Although the French Socialist politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn owes his recent appointment as the IMF’s managing director to that accord, dating from the 1940s, he agreed that it is anachronistic. “A native of any of the 185 member states should be able to direct the Fund, so long as he is competent to do so,” Strauss-Kahn told Le Monde.
Strauss-Kahn also undertook to work for a reform of the voting system in the IMF, so that poor countries are no longer as marginalised as they currently are. He declared himself in favour of a ‘double majority’ system for key decisions. Under that system, voting weights would be based partly on a ‘one country one vote’ rule, rather than solely on the ‘one dollar one vote’ rule which currently gives a disproportionate level of influence to the rich governments that are the Fund’s largest shareholders.
As things stand, 43 African countries have a combined voting power of just over 4%, about two percentage points less than votes commanded by each of the EU’s three most populous states: France, Britain and Germany.
Anti-poverty campaigners have argued that Strauss-Kahn needs to make good on his commitments to protect his own credibility. “He can only redeem himself in the eyes of the poorest countries most affected by the IMF by vigorously supporting fundamental reforms,” said Sandeep Chachra from ActionAid.
Don’t call Africa ‘sick’ – Michel Africa should not be typecast as the “sick continent”, Louis Michel, the European commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, has said.
Speaking in Brussels last week, Michel contended that it is time to project “more accurate images of a continent with plenty of diversity and wealth”.
Michel acknowledged that Africa faces serious health issues. One in 16 women in Sub-Saharan Africa die from complications during childbirth or pregnancy, he noted, compared to one in 3,800 in rich countries. He also stated that the number of new HIV infections is rising faster than treatment services for people with AIDS are being scaled up.
Nonetheless, he pointed out that illnesses can be combated. Deaths from measles have shrunk by almost 75 percent in Africa since 1999, largely as a result of vaccination, he said.
Regarding the continent as synonymous with disease is “a stigmatisation that does not do justice to the realities of Africa and that is potentially harmful for development cooperation,” he said.
Barroso ‘confident’ of treaty deal José-Manuel Barroso, the European Commission’s president, has said he is “confident” that all 27 EU countries will approve a new treaty this month.
Portugal, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, has presented a draft version of a so-called reform treaty to other governments in the Union over the past week.
This will form the basis of the treaty it wants EU leaders to accept at the 18-19 October summit in Lisbon.
Yet it is not certain that all countries will sign up to it.
The task of reaching an agreement is complicated by the general election due to take place in Poland on 21 October.
Warsaw is demanding a clause in the treaty which would allow it delay any EU decision that it regards as compromising its fundamental interest. Polish representatives at the summit are expected to drive a hard bargain, in order to reassure the electorate at home that they are not capitulating to pressure from other EU governments.
As several other EU states are opposed to the Polish call, one idea being bandied about is that the possibility of delay could be recognised in a political declaration attached to the treaty, rather than having it inserted into the main body of the document.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski is to discuss the treaty’s contents, when he meets the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week.
New sanctions against Burma expected EU foreign ministers are likely to introduce new sanctions against Burma’s military junta, at a meeting next week (15 October).
Ambassadors representing the Union’s governments agreed on 2 October that the sanctions against Rangoon first introduced by the EU in 1996 should be beefed up.
The new sanctions are likely to include an import ban on gemstones and timber from Burma but will almost certainly not require European firms, such as the French energy giant, from investing in the Burmese gas sector.
Amnesty International has called on the Union’s ministers to end loopholes in the previously imposed weapons embargo on Burma. Such loopholes have allowed European manufactured components to military aircraft be sold to Rangoon’s brutal junta, which is reported to have arrested thousands of Buddist monks in the past few weeks, holding them in ad hoc centres.
