The challenges of the interim EPAs

By Dr Clive Thomas

This series of Sunday columns assessing the CARIFORUM-EU, EPA started on January 20 and after fourteen weeks it remains incomplete without an appreciation of some key issues surrounding the several interim EPAs, which were initialled in Africa and the Pacific at about the same time. This and next week’s columns address the challenges and opportunities offered by this situation.

Firestorm of controversy
In the Caribbean a firestorm of controversy has greeted the CARIFORUM-EU, EPA. This continues to be fuelled as many of its shortcomings and criticisms from many quarters in the developing world and Europe come to the fore.

At this juncture a way forward that might reconcile these differences would be heavily dependent on political accords centering on the continuing negotiations over the interim EPAs and a framework arrangement under which all six regional EPAs when completed would be governed.

Several distinguished colleagues of mine, Professors Havelock Brewster, Norman Girvan and Vaughn Lewis have posited that there is still room (time) for Caricom reflection and the design of an approach that is not premised on the EPA as a ‘done deal.’ Experts in international law who have been writing commentaries on the on-going EPA negotiations point out that the initialled EPAs are by no means cast in stone. (See Lorand Bartels, Trade Negotiations Insights, April, 2008).

My reading of the situation is that while this is easily the best way forward, I do not believe the political leadership of Caricom has any appetite for the considerable intellectual, moral, and political challenges this will pose. Those committed to the existing EPA cannot envisage an alternative route to the development objectives of Caricom beyond the EU designed EPA box, which is fraught with regional pitfalls.

Those who are not so committed and are willing to think outside the EPA box may feel that the costs to their economies are ‘bearable’ and in any event will largely fall on future generations. Those who may be definitely opposed to the EPA approach may feel that they cannot take on both their colleagues and the EU.