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A
global call for action to stop EPAs
Africa
Trade Network
March
30, 2006
http://www.twnafrica.org/news_detail.asp?twnID=892
From the 27-30
March, 2006 we the undermentioned organisations involved in the
Stop–EPA campaign, from Africa and Europe met in Harare, Zimbabwe,
at meeting organised the umbrella of the Africa Trade Network. We
deliberated on the developments since the campaign was adopted and
discussed strategies for the coming period.
It has been two years since civil society organisations, social
movements, and mass-membership organisations across Africa, the
Caribbean, the Pacific and Europe adopted the campaign to STOP
the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) as currently designed
and being negotiated between the European Union and ACP groups of
countries.
The campaign was adopted on the grounds that in their current form,
the EPAs are essentially free-trade agreements between unequal parties:
Europe, with its overwhelming economic and political power, and
the fragile and dependent economies of the ACP countries. In addition,
the process of the negotiations is imbalanced and rushed, allowing
the EU to impose its interests and agenda, and dictate the momentum
of the negotiations to suit its own needs and purposes.
Two years since the adoption of the campaign, there is wide-spread
recognition among governments, inter-governmental institutions,
parliamentarians, civil society actors and a diverse range of social
constituencies across the ACP, Europe and the rest of the world
of the dangers posed by the EPAs to the economies and peoples of
the ACP countries. This has yet not led to fundamental changes in
the nature of the EPAs and the process of negotiations.
Member governments of the European Union, which have publicly adopted
policy positions in direct contradiction to the negotiating mandate
of the EC, have not followed up with action to change that mandate.
Strong unofficial reservations expressed by other member-governments
continue to remain as unofficial reservations.
For its part, the European Commission has constructed new rhetoric
to sell the EPAs and justify continuation of its mandate. It has
encouraged false hopes of increase in European development assistance
to ACP countries, and used different forms of pressure, including
aid conditionality, to continue to override the reluctance of ACP
groups to yield to its interests.
On the part of governments in the ACP countries, individual and
collective public positions, which have effectively repudiated the
EPAs in their current forms are not translated into policy and negotiating
positions. Dependency on aid, and concern for the maintenance of
preferences seem to have disproportionately influenced governments
into accepting the ECs terms and parameters of negotiations. In
some instances, secretariats of the regional groups and machineries
whose role it is to facilitate the negotiations on behalf of the
ACP groupings have abandoned the policy directions of national governments
which make up the region, and have tended to promote the perspectives
of the EC.
An immediate outcome of these developments is the negative effect
of the EPA negotiations on autonomous ACP regional integration initiatives.
On-going regional integration initiatives and processes have been
hijacked and diverted, and many historical and political African
regional configurations have been split.
Added to the above situation, the current deadlock in the WTO negotiations
has lead to increasing pressure on bilateral and regional free trade
negotiations.
All these developments affirm validity of the positions and concerns
of the STOP EPA campaign, and make its demands even more urgent.
We are inspired by the global mobilisation that the campaign has
generated and welcome the increasing numbers of diverse groups of
stakeholders and networks of actors who have joined or otherwise
taken up the cause of the campaign.
Although civil society engagement with the EPA negotiations is increasing,
we are still very much concerned by the lack of involvement of the
majority of affected citizens, workers and farmers in ACP countries
and the lack of openness and transparency in the negotiations.
We reaffirm the positions and demands of the STOP EPA campaign.
We reject the EPAs in their current form. They will:
- expand Europe’s
access to ACP markets for its goods, services, and investments;
expose ACP producers to unfair European competition in domestic
and regional markets, and increase the domination and concentration
of European firms, goods and services;
- thereby lead
to deeper unemployment, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity and
social and gender inequity and inequality as well as undermine
human and social rights;
- endanger
the ongoing but fragile processes of regional integration among
the ACP countries; and deepen - and prolong - the socio-economic
decline and political fragility that characterises most ACP countries.
We re-affirm
our demand for an overhaul and review of the EU’s neo-liberal external
trade policy, particularly with respect to developing countries,
and demanded that EU-ACP trade cooperation should be founded on
an approach that:
- is based
on a principle of non-reciprocity, as instituted in Generalised
System of Preferences and special and differential treatment in
the WTO;
- protects
ACP producers domestic and regional markets;
- reverses
the pressure for trade and investment liberalisation; and allows
the necessary policy space and supports ACP countries to pursue
their own development strategies.
In further
pursuit of the goals and demands of the campaign we make the following
demands.
Governments of the ACP countries
The primary responsibility for promoting the interests and needs
of the people in ACP countries and of defending them against the
ravages of free trade agreements with the EU lies with the governments
in the ACP countries, both in their individual and collective capacities,
acting at national, regional and ACP-wide levels. In this regard
we call upon ACP governments:
- to heed to
the call of their citizens over the EPAs and ensure that hopes
over increased aid, and concerns about the future of preferences
does not lead to sacrificing the economic and developmental future
of their people;
- to live up
to their policy statements and positions on the EPAs and to translate
these into positions in the processes of engagement over the EPA;
- to reassert
their policy authority on the negotiations over the regional secretariats,
and to ensure that the latter do not undermine stated policy positions
in the negotiations;
European
Union – Member States
The European Union has a responsibility to live up to its stated
developmental objectives. We demand that member-governments of the
European Union should
- assert their
authority over the EC on issues concerning ACP-EU co-operation
for the promotion of sustainable development in the ACP countries;
- change the
EC’s negotiating mandate in relation to the EPA negotiations;
and to this end;
- ensure that
the EPA review mandated for this year is comprehensive, all-inclusive,
transparent, and substantive and places sustainable development
at the centre.
Finally we call
upon civil society organisations, social movements, and mass-membership
organisations across the ACP and Europe to join the campaign, and
engage with their governments on the issues of ACP development in
relation to the EU.
Harare, Thursday, 30 March 2006
1. Mwelekeo wa
NGO (MWENGO), Zimbabwe
2. Third World Network-Africa, Ghana
3. ACDIC, Cameroon
4. Alternative Information Development Centre
5. AIPAD TRUST, Zimbabwe
6. Alternatives to Neo-liberalism in Southern Africa (ANSA)
7. Civil Society Trade Network of Zambia
8. CECIDE, Guinea
9. Christian Relief and Development Association (CRDA), Ethiopia
10. Economic Justice Network, South Africa
11. ENDA, Senegal
12. GENTA, South Africa
13. GRAPAD, Benin
14. InterAfrica Group, Ethiopia
15. Labour and Economic Development Research Institute (LEDRIZ),
Zimbabwe
16. Malawi Economic Justice And Network
17. Southern African People’s Solidarity Network (SAPSN)
18. SEATINI, Zimbabwe
19. TradesCentre, Zimbabwe
20. Zimbabwe Coalition
on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD)
21. Action Aid
22. ACORD
23. Both Ends
24. ChristianAid
25. ICCO
26. KASA/WERKSTATT OKONOMIE
27. One World Action (VIA Project)
28. Oxfam International
29. Traidcraft
30. 11.11.11
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