We are days out from the next Summit Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government and there has been no concrete update on the carefully crafted Conference decision on full free movement which had been taken in July 2023. On that occasion, the distinguished Heads of Government, while undergoing a collective reality check on the 50th Anniversary of CARICOM, acknowledged that free movement, one of the cornerstones of the integration movement’s flagship Single Market and Economy, should have already become a reality. Yet the “blurb” put out by the Secretariat on 21 June on this imminent 47th Meeting of Heads of Government scheduled for Grenada, from 3-5 July, only goes so far as to say that “Heads of Government will also review the progress towards the goals for full free movement…’.
It is no doubt fortuitous that it was the then Chairman of CARICOM, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who has responsibility in the CARICOM Quasi Cabinet for Labour and free movement of skills, who had spearheaded this thrust. Under the rubric of “CARICOM Single Market and Economy”, the Conference, in classic best-endeavour CARICOM-speak, ‘agreed to work towards the free movement of all CARICOM nationals within the Community by 31 March 2024’ (that is, three months and counting). More, it was agreed that ‘…any appropriate amendments to the Revised Treaty…would be completed in the intervening period’.
