Caribbean parliamentarians were urged this week to utilise the opportunity of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly to join with Caribbean leaders in taking a strong stand against the EU’s approach to differentiation.
The EU has indicated that it will apply the principle of differentiation to the 11th EuropeanDevelopment Fund (EDF) National Indicative Programmes (NIPs), with the resultant effect that the majority of NIPs in the Caribbean Region will be cut.
Ivan Ogando Lora, Director-General of the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (Cariforum) Directorate in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretariat ex-pressed this view before he left to attend the 9th Regional Meeting of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA), which was held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 14-16 February, 2013.
A release from Caricom Secretatiat said the Assembly was expected to bring together 15 JPA parliamentarians from national parliaments of the Caribbean Region and an equal number of JPA Members from the European Parliament to exchange views on a number of issues of interest to the Caribbean.
The release said that Ogando was invited by the JPA organizers to participate in the 9th Regional Meeting and deliver an address on the Cariforum-EU EPA. He indicated that in his speech he would call attention to the negative effects of the EU’s New Development Policy, about which Caribbean leaders have already raised serious concerns.
Ogando quoted from his text saying that “the European Union (EU) has been a valued, longstanding development partner. However, its stance on differentiation has prompted the Cariforum Region to take a hard look at this partnership, as, at a time when regional states are counting on reliable resources to implement the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and the Caribbean-EU Joint Strategy – neither of which makes specific provisions for financial support – the EDF, as the core source for financing development cooperation within the framework of Cariforum-EU relations, now faces the prospect of being scaled back.” He cautioned that the mechanics of the application of differentiation remain internal to the European Commission.
He pointed out that most recently, Caribbean Heads of Government had voiced their concerns with respect to the new EU Development Policy, in discussions with President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barroso, on the occasion of the Cariforum-EU High-Level Meeting held in the margins of the first Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States (Celac)-EU Summit in Chile last month.
