–Rodrigues-Birkett
Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett says Cariforum values its partnership with the European Union and has questioned why it appears as though the region is being penalized for adhering to the partnership and agreements while other regions are being granted more concessions.
Rodrigues-Birkett made these remarks at the 20th meeting of the Cariforum Council of Ministers held late last month in the Dominican Republic. She said that Cariforum countries are now faced with the issue of “differentiation,” despite having done most of what is required under the EPA in good faith, a press release from the ministry said.
The minister, who led the Guyana delegation, said the European Union should be aware of and consider the fact that notwithstanding the global financial and economic crises which occurred immediately after Cariforum countries signed the Economic Partnership Agree-ment (EPA) with Europe, the region had started to implement the Agreement. Eight of the 15 Cariforum countries have introduced the tariff reductions included in the EPA and five countries have started to ratify the Agreement, with the others planning to do so soon.
The minister, who was assigned together with her colleagues from The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago to speak on behalf of Cariforum countries in an interaction with the EU’s Christian Leffler, Managing Director for the Americas and Caribbean, in the European Commission, was at the time speaking on the issue of “differentiation” which is part of the EU’s “Agenda for Change” and could see development assistance to Cariforum countries being severely reduced. She further reminded Leffler that Cariforum was the first ACP group to have concluded a comprehensive EPA in December 2007, before the January 2008 deadline, and that Cariforum, in fact, is the only group to have negotiated a comprehensive EPA to date. According to the release, the five-yearly review which was requested by Guyana prior to the signing of the EPA will take place next year.
Rodrigues-Birkett also reminded the reminded the EU representative that the other ACP groups that are still negotiating EPAs have even requested that the timeline for the conclusion of those negotiations be extended to 2016 – eight years after Cariforum would have signed its EPA in October 2008.
As had been previously reported, Caricom and Cariforum Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque had also voiced concerns that the new European Development Policy may see a decrease in development assistance from the European Union (EU), in his address at the meeting.
According to a Caricom Secretariat press release, the secretary-general submitted that the new Policy threatened to “cast a shadow over Cariforum-EU relations which had matured and broadened to the benefit of both parties.” The new EU Development Policy includes a reassessment of the EU’s assistance to middle income countries, the release said.
“A disquieting aspect of this approach, better known as differentiation, is based exclusively on macro-economic referents like [Gross Domestic Product], Gross National Product] and per capita income in individual Cariforum States. If applied without taking into consideration the vulnerability and the limited resilience of the small economies of Cariforum, not to mention the acute levels of poverty in numerous communities, this will have a negative impact on certain programmes and the levels of assistance to be allocated to some of our Cariforum States under the 11th EDF. In a word, our concern is that the quantum of assistance from our major development partner will be decreased,” LaRocque told his audience at the opening ceremony.
The secretary-general had said that shaping the new relationship with the EU will be examined at a time when a “new partnership strategy is taking form and a new EU Development Policy and approach to budget support is being fashioned, threatening to cast a long shadow over Cariforum-EU relations in the years to come.”
