 As thirteen Caribbean countries signed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the EU on Wednesday, Terraviva Europe reported that senior EU officials had "admitted being embarrassed at how the bloc's own procedures are delaying them" from signing the EPAs. This delay is particularly embarrassing for the European Commission, which repeatedly insisted during 2007 that the EPAs must be concluded by the end of that year. The Commission's attitude led to criticism from ACP countries and civil society that the agreements were being rushed and that unfair pressure was being exerted on the ACP states. The Commission's stated that the EPAs needed to be submitted to the WTO in time for its deadline of January 1 2008, but so far the 35 EPAs initialled in late 2007 have not been formally notified to the WTO. Terraviva reports that David O'Sullivan, head of the Commission's Directorate-General for Trade, "confessed on October 13 at a hearing at the European Parliament that the delays were ‘very worrying'", and "blamed the holdup on demands by the European Union's governments that the accords be translated into the Union's 23 official languages."
At the hearing, Green MEP Frithjof Schmidt suggested that the Commission had misled Parliament about the need for rapid notification to the WTO. This new embarrassment represents a further blow to the Commission, which has repeatedly been accused of mismanaging and misrepresenting the EPA negotiations. Mr Mandelson was hailed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as having done "a brilliant job" in Brussels when left his post as Trade Commissioner to return to the UK Cabinet earlier this month. Many have questioned this assessment, considering the strong criticism the Commissioner received during the EPA negotiations for employing bullying tactics and ignoring ACP concerns.
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