Cariforum governments are expected to sign onto the Economic Partnership Agree-ment (EPA) with the Euro-pean Union (EU) by the second week in April and the lead Caribbean negotiator has mounted a stirring defence of its attributes and necessity.
Giving an overview of the Cariforum-European Commission (EC) EPA at a workshop for regional journalists at the Grand Barbados Hotel in Barbados on Friday, Director General of the Carib-bean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) Ambassador Richard Bernal said that the 450-page legal document, which is a “trade agreement” and not an “aid agreement” would be released online in a “few” days time.
At the moment Bernal said the Agreement is being set to legal jargon after which it would be uploaded to the CRNM website for the public’s perusal. It would also be translated into the languages of the Cariforum countries and those of the EU. The Cariforum countries comprise all Caricom countries and the Dominican Republic.
Bernal said that it was unfortunate that a number of prominent leaders, including those in academia in the Caribbean Community have misunderstood the context within which the EPA was negotiated and the benefits that are to be derived from it. He said that the one-way preferential trading arrangements in the traditional sense could no longer hold its own in a rapidly globalised economy and this was already challenged at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). No single country, institution or group is able to govern the global market and as such, he said, there were trade agreements with set rules which provide challenges and opportunities but there are no guarantees.
As pragmatic, realistic people, Bernal said that if the region cannot get the one-way preferential trade forever, the very next best thing to do was to negotiate an EPA with the EU. “If we did not negotiate an EPA, we would end up at a disadvantage. Why would we want to hand on to the preferential trade arrangements when they are being eroded?” he queried, adding “So all those people who are talking about preferential trading indefinitely are living in the past.”
Contrary to those who are saying that the EPA was forced on the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, Bernal said all ACP countries signed the Cotonou Agreement in 2000; agreeing to the WTO waiver and to new trading arrangements to be put in place by December 31, 2007. “We did it voluntarily. We knew about it since then,” he said.
At the level of the Caricom/Cariforum HoGs, the ambassador said they also agreed to undertake a timeline driven by the WTO waiver as agreed to in Cotonou agreement. On the argument that the agreement should have been done by the entire ACP group, Bernal said that in the negotiating process there was an exchange of information at the technical and ministerial levels of the ACP but there were many differences among the various regional groupings.
Stuck together
On the point that the ACP all had common interests and that they should have stuck together, he said that, “Common interests in reality were different
