Le 24 janvier 2014, après dix ans de tractation intense et difficile, les négociateurs de région de l’Afrique de l’Ouest et la Commission européenne se sont finalement mis d’accord sur les modalités d’un APE régional. Isabelle Ramdoo & San Bilal En effet, cette réalisation est loin d’être négligeable, étant donné les différences importantes entre les pays au sein même de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, certains, comme la Côte d’Ivoire ou le Ghana, en avaient plus besoin que d’autres, pour maintenir leurs accès sur le marché de l’Union européenne. L’impossibilité de parvenir à un accord régional aurait ...
After 10 years of tough negotiations, on 24th January 2014, West African and European Commission (EC) negotiators reached a major breakthrough on what now will be the first regional economic partnership agreement (EPA) since 2007. Isabelle Ramdoo and San Bilal This is no small achievement. Given the disparity of situations among West African countries, some needing an EPA to preserve their preferential market access to the EU, (Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana), while others were not dependent on it. Failure to reach a regional agreement with the EU would have strained, and potentially threatened to disrupt, the integration process ...
The 159 members of the World Trade Organization finally agreed on a deal in the early hours of Saturday 7th December in Bali, after intense and difficult negotiations, saving the multilateral trading system from the sclerosis of the past seven years. The results achieved in Bali clearly sealed the shifting power game between the emerging South and the developed world. But did Bali witness a new era of trade negotiations that will have to conjugate with an increasingly louder voice from the South or was it, on the contrary, a last successful deal, like a ...
+++ ECDPM Challenges blog series. Post number three +++ Will 2014 be a year of implementation? If 2014 is to be a year in which we see genuine moves towards economic transformation it will likely rely less on the international agenda than domestic politics and how these interact with global economic processes. Economic transformation will only take place when governments and the private sector can align interests to make partnerships work. Otherwise, we are unlikely to see much progress in 2014. We have a busy agenda ahead of us…. On-going discussions on the post-2015 agenda will offer opportunities ...
At the opening ceremony of the negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States the chairperson of the ACP Group arrived late, keeping hundreds of officials and diplomats, not least then EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, waiting. This was on 27 September 2002.Ten years and four EU Trade Commissioners later, the EU still seems to be waiting for many ACP countries to come along. Perhaps with few exceptions, the EPA agenda has not generated the enthusiasm for effective development partnership it was meant to ...
Despite being hit by the current economic and financial crisis, Europe remains a strong advocate and keen supporter of deep regional integration, at home and abroad. In Africa, the arguments for fostering integration are manifold; from building larger markets that can attract Foreign Direct Investments, achieving economies of scale, enhancing competitiveness, to fundamental security considerations. Today there are a host of ambitious integration arrangements among African states, many of them overlapping in space and scope. However the track record is quite disappointing for a variety of reasons. What could the EU do to improve this ...
On Friday 27 January the European Commission published its Communication on “Trade, Growth and Development: Tailoring Trade and Investment Policy for Those Countries Most in Need” proposing “concrete ways to enhance synergies between trade and development policies”. It contains all the right words, but does not say much new. As is often the case with EC Communications, the document brings together a breadth of content from across different Directorates within the EC. This leads to a relatively un-controversial document that appears to draw on the main emerging consensus in both fields of trade and development ...
ECDPM is currently reflecting on the content and orientation of the next issue of its annual Challenges Inbrief. This publication is published at the start of each year, and aims to identify key issues for policy making for EU-Africa relations in the year ahead. The paper, in traditional ECDPM style, aims to be informative and ‘facilitating’, helping readers identify key debates and moments in EU development cooperation and external action. The writing process provides us with an opportunity to take a step back from our day to day work to look forward and to reflect ...
++ GUEST CONTRIBUTION ++ Forthcoming in Trade Negotiations Insights Vol. 10, N0.8, November 2011 On 30 September 2011 the European Commission issued a proposal to withdraw 18 ACP countries from the list of beneficiaries of preferences under Regulation 1528/2007 as of 1 January 2014.[1] This proposal is based on a provision in the Regulation permitting withdrawal of any ACP country that does not ratify an interim or full EPA within a ‘reasonable period of time’ such that the entry into force of the agreement is ‘unreasonably delayed’. There are various problems with the Commission’s proposal. ...
The European Commission (EC) finally announced today that countries that have concluded an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) but not taken the necessary steps to ratify and implement it would no longer benefit from the EPA market access to Europe as from 1st January 2014. The EC Market Access Regulation (MAR) 1528 of 1st January 2008 provides duty free quota free market access for African Caribbean and Pacific countries that have concluded an EPA. The Regulation requires countries to sign, ratify and implement the Agreement within a “reasonable period of time”. At it currently stands, the ...
