EU governments to back plan for slimmed down African trade pacts European Union governments are likely to formally agree this week that planned free trade deals with nearly 80 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries will be less ambitious than originally envisaged.
While the European Commission had hoped that deals – known as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) - would be reached this year and cover everything from services to intellectual property, it has recently conceded that EPAs concluded by 31 December will be mainly restricted to trade in goods. That position is expected to be backed by the Union’s development aid ministers when they meet this Tuesday (20 November).
Senior EU figures are hoping that tension over the EPAs will not cast a pall over next month’s summit between European and African heads of state and government in Lisbon. Most African governments feel they are not yet ready to prise open their markets to European goods in the way that the Commission wants. Abdoulaye Wade, the Senegalese president, recently said that EU-Africa relations are in crisis because of differences over trade.
The Commission has threatened to impose punitive tariffs on ACP countries if they do not sign EPAs by New Year’s Eve.
Nonetheless, last week it agreed an arrangement with several East African countries allowing them twelve months of quota and tariff-free access to the EU’s markets for all goods, bar sugar and rice. The ‘interim framework agreement’ was reached with Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.
New transatlantic tensions over climate change The EU and US are at odds over global warming ahead of a key international conference in Bali, Indonesia next month.
Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which bands together government scientists from throughout the world, issued a fresh warning about the urgency of tackling global warming.
Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, said the new IPCC report “fully supports” the EU’s policy that the earth’s temperature must not rise more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
But Harlan Watson, America’s top negotiator on climate change, argued that the two degrees limit was based on a “value judgement”, rather than sound science.
The IPCC outlined how the poor will be disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. The output from rain-fed farming could be halved, food security will be compromised in Africa and as many as 250 million people could have less access to fresh water than they do at the moment.
The scientists nonetheless found that the effects of climate change can be mitigated at a reasonable cost. Such measures as reducing subsidies for fossil fuels and introducing carbon taxes have been found to be environmentally effective. But resistance by vested interests may make them “difficult to implement”, according to their report.
MEPs urge support for peace-keeping in Somalia The EU should help finance a peace-keeping force in Somalia, the European Parliament has said.
Although the African Union regards Somalia as the most worrying security problem facing the continent after Darfur, its efforts to deploy peace-keepers there have been largely unsuccessful. So far just 1,600 soldiers out of a promised 8,000 African troops have been stationed in Somalia.
To help remedy this situation, MEPs have called for EU logistical and financial support to the African Union.
In a motion approved last week (15 November), the Parliament also called for an immediate ceasefire among the warring parties and for the embargo on supplying weapons to Somalia introduced by the UN in 1992 to be properly enforced.
Some 100,000 people have been displaced as a result of recent fighting between the Union of Islamic Courts and allied troops from Ethiopia and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Efforts to provide food and medicine to the 38,000 children suffering malnutrition in the country have been hampered by attacks on aid workers. In October the World Food Programme temporarily suspended its activities in the country after its director was detained by TFG officials.
The Parliament also requested that the situation in Somalia be addressed at the EU-Africa summit in Lisbon (8-9 December).
Cyclone ‘major tragedy’ for Bangladesh – Michel Louis Michel, the EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, has described the cyclone that hit Bangladesh last week as a “major tragedy”.
The Bangladeshi Red Crescent Society has estimated that Cyclone Sidr caused at least 3,000 deaths. Some 3 million people were either evacuated from the low-lying Southern coast or had their homes and villages destroyed by winds that reached 250 kilometres per hour. This was the worst storm in Bangladesh since 1991, when 143,000 people lost their lives.
Among the immediate needs identified by aid workers were food, clean drinking water, temporary shelter and basic household items.
Some €1.5 million in ‘fast-track’ aid was released by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Office (ECHO) in response to the crisis. ECHO staff were also dispatched from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka to assess the needs of the affected region.
Child labour in Central Asia on EP agenda Support for security cooperation with repressive states in Central Asia should be minimised, according to a new European Parliament report.
To be discussed by the assembly’s foreign affairs committee this week (19-21 November), the report examines the EU’s relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Particular concern is expressed about Tajikistan, one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. Effectively a cotton monoculture, child labour and the exploitation of women are rife in the country, the report suggests.
Although the Tajik civil war ended in 1997, a high number of cluster bombs remain unexploded in the country, which is encountering what German Green MEP Cem Ozdemir, the report’s author, describes as “precarious stability”. The Dushanbe government does not tolerate opposition, he said, imposing strict controls on the media.
Ozdemir welcomed plans by the European Commission to set up an office in Dushanbe during 2008, arguing that this should lead to a strengthening of cooperation with Tajikistan.
Outside investment could have a role, he added, in reducing child labour. But he feels that European companies will be unwilling to invest in Tajikistan until its infrastructure is improved and high levels of corruption are addressed.
His report also expresses concern about the persecution of human rights activists in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Plans to increase trade with Turkmenistan should be made conditional on human rights improvements, his report says.
