EU meets success and resistance in free trade talks Ivory Coast has become the latest country in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc to accept an interim free trade or Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU.
A deal covering trade in goods was reached between the European Commission and the Ivorian government in Abidjan last week (7 December).
Yet the Commission has so far not been able to convince any other West African country to sign EPAs. Talks between it and Ghana broke down over the past week, for example, because the Accra government refused to accept a clause in an EU proposal that would ban it from levying export taxes. Ghana applies such taxes on cocoa and scrap metal, in order to encourage processing of raw materials at home.
The Commission is adamant that nearly 80 ACP countries sign EPAs dealing with trade in goods by 31 December. Talks on a range of other issues such as investment rules and services liberalisation would then continue into 2008.
To date, the countries that have given their preliminary approval to EPAs are: Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, the Seychelles, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
In all cases, the ACP signatories will be required to liberalise at least 80% of their markets to European imports.
South Africa and Namibia have refused to sign a proposed agreement drawn up by the Commission. Both stressed their dissatisfaction with a ‘most favoured nation’ clause, under which any preferences they grant to other trading partners would automatically have to be conferred on the EU. Diplomats from the two countries have stated that they regard such a provision as an interference with economic sovereignty.
Sudan motion sponsored by EU The EU has sponsored a resolution at the United Nations Security Council, which criticises the failure to apprehend Sudanese figures accused of crimes against humanity..
In April, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants for the arrest of Ahmed Haroun, Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, and Ali Kosheib, a leading figure in the Janjaweed bandits who are accused of carrying out widespread killings in the western region of Darfur with the backing of the Khartoum government. Both men face 51 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape, forcing people from their homes and persecution. Yet neither has been handed over to the court for trial.
The EU’s resolution states that the ICC has a right to pursue indicted war criminals inside Sudan.
In the past four and half years, the Darfur crisis has claimed the lives of 200,000 and uprooted 2.5 million people.
Uncertainty remains about whether a joint African Union and UN peace-keeping force will be deployed in Darfur, as planned, in less than a month’s time. The Sudanese government has said that it will refuse to allow non-African troops on the country’s soil.
In a new report, John Holmes, the UN’s under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, complains that the national authorities in Sudan are hampering the access of aid workers to certain areas.
Europe’s aid record questioned Eurostep has questioned the EU’s track record on aid to Africa.
In a statement issued ahead of last weekend’s EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, the organisation noted that the EU is providing 52% of all aid to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
Yet the Union has failed to heed repeated demands from MEPs and anti-poverty campaigners that at least 20% of all aid should be devoted to health and education. As a result most aid bypasses the neediest.
Simon Stocker, Eurostep’s director, also voiced unease about the EU’s moves to pay ever-expanding amounts of aid directly into the national coffers of recipients – a process known as ‘general budget support’.
“A disturbingly small proportion of this support ends up in health and poverty-alleviation programmes,” he said. “We have to trust countries’ governments but also act in the best interest of those who most need our aid, primarily women and children.”
Given that the EU ‘earmarks’ some funds for roads and other transport projects, he asked why a similar practice cannot be applied to social programmes.
Media coverage of the EU-Africa summit was largely dominated by the attendance of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who was invited to the Lisbon gathering despite being officially banned from entering the Union. Gordon Brown, prime minister of Britain (Zimbabwe’s former colonial overlord) boycotted in protest. Yet José-Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said that in international politics “you meet people your mother would not like to see you with.”
Commission dithers on climate change Gunter Verheugen, the EU’s industry commissioner, is seeking to torpedo a plan to fine car-makers that will exceed new limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas causing climate change.
According to the newspaper European Voice, Verheugen has been arguing that no sanctions against car-makers should be included in a law that the Commission will propose on 19 December. This law is designed to give legal effect to a proposal made in February that cars should emit no more than 130g of carbon dioxide per kilometre by 2012.
Meanwhile, a number of developing countries have used the Bali conference on climate change to highlight how they face devastation.
Low-lying states such as Tuvalu in the Pacific and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean have stated that they are suffering from rising sea levels and more violent storms.
An alliance of forty-three island states argued that rich countries should go beyond a plan approved by EU leaders this year to limit global warming to a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
In order to guarantee their future, emissions must be reduced to a level that ensures temperatures stay “well-below” that threshold, the island states insisted.
Mandelson spats with Clinton over trade remarks Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade, has attacked a policy statement by US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on the need for a new approach to global commerce.
In comments reported last week, Clinton attacked proposals put forward in the Doha round of world trade talks that could narrow the scope that developing countries would have to use health and environmental law for restricting imports. She also stated that she may not try to revive the stalled Doha round if she is elected.
Mandelson described her “apparent scepticism” about the prospects of the Doha negotiations concluding successfully as “a disturbing sign of the times”.
While he admitted that better social regulations are needed, he argued that it is wrong to press for a less open system of world trade. “The real risk in the globalisation debate is that we move from the undeniable truth that globalisation could work better to the false conclusion that we are better off without it,” he said.
