(Photo: Rusty Stewart/Flickr)

Article by Federico Guerrieri

In a recent article on this website, Judith Sargentini, MEP for the European Greens, underlines that the Lisbon Treaty creates an opportunity to modernise European agricultural subsides and introduces a specific legal base for humanitarian aid. Article 208 in particular makes the reduction and the eradication of poverty the primary objective of the Union’s development cooperation policy.

As we have already stated in previousarticles, the European Union should mantain its own promise, rather than prioritise the comptetiviness of the European companies.
Judith Sargentini believes that policy coherence is the key to making article 208 happen. Trade should be the first issue on the agenda for policy coherence, but the European Commission has not included it in the issues to focus on.

European Alternatives has already showed the problems caused by the EU trade policy in Senegal. Today we will analyze the trade agreements between the EU and some African countries, such as Lesotho.

Recently, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique, countries part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), broke with the region’s unified approach and signed individual new interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has criticised the interim EPAs, because they have been negotiated with individual countries, “without paying particular attention to existing regional economic communities” adding that the interim EPAs “will slow down or unravel the regional integration agenda”.

(Photo: Santheo/Flickr)

As reported by IPS, many organizations have been unhappy with how the EU divided the regional blocs for the EPA talks. Especially the inclusion of a ‘’southern and eastern Africa” EPA bloc has provoked criticism because it does not take into account existing configurations. Richard Kamidza, senior researcher at the African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) argued that “this is a divide and rule tactic by the EU” and Margaret Legum, an economist at the South African New Economics (SANE) network, concurred that the developed states’ approach to Africa “has always been divide and rule”.

According to Xavier Carim, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) international trade and economic development deputy Director-General, in their current form, the EPAs between the EU and the SADC would limit the SADC region’s policy space to promote industrial and agricultural development, would hamper efforts to promote trade diversification, and would undermine regional integration processes.

Critics argue that EU has put pressure on some countries, such as Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique, in order to sign the EPAs. Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika accused the EU of “imperialism” and Luis Morago, head of Oxfam International’s EU Office, confirmed that “developing countries have been placed under enormous pressure to sign”.
Some African countries and a number of non-governmental organizations are pressing the EU to renegotiate some elements of the interim EPAs. Oxfam underlines as “the deals were finalized in haste”, ”without sufficient time to analyse the implications of the provisions being agreed”. Xavier Carim added that it would be important to see a willingness from the EU to prioritise its professed concern to promote regional integration, not just in broad declaratory statements, but in detailed outcomes of the negotiating processes”.

The EU is currently refusing to consider any renegotiation arguing that this new generation of bilateral and regional agreements is vital in order for developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific to maintain their access to European markets in a form that is compatible with WTO rules. Oxfam, in a report called “Signing away the future“, warned that, in an increasingly globalised world, these agreements seek to benefit rich-country exporters and firms at the expense of poor farmers and workers, with grave implications for the environment and development. The worst of the agreements strip developing countries of the capacity to effectively govern their economies and to protect their poorest people. Going beyond the provisions negotiated at a multilateral level, they impose far-reaching, hard-to-reverse rules that systematically dismantle national policies designed to promote development.

As we have already seen in a recent post, the EU leaves no opportunities for less developed countries to protect their companies, because trade liberalisation opened to international competition the internal markets of developing countries either too quickly or too extensively, undermining the rural sector and rural livelihoods.
Although the EU argues that regional integration is one of the main objectives in its trade negotiation with regions of developing countries, Concord Europe shows that, in many cases, the trade agreements promoted frustrate regional integration efforts and have proven to be a stumbling rather than a building block.

The European Trade Commissioner, Lady Ashton, should stop to pursue the talks with developing countries, using the words of George Monbiot, in the style of a 21st Century Viceroy, and the EU should be more responding to sustainable development and its international commitments.