WTO rules only require the EPA to be WTO-compatible, not WTO-plus

Sep 05, 2008 Letters

Dear Editor,

It’s an enigma to believe that something so sweet as sugar could engender such acrimony, poverty, and inhumanity in societies like Guyana, where sugar is the mainstay of the economy.
And so the never-ending saga of sugar persists. You only have to reflect on sugar’s rollercoaster history in colonial times, then the recent end of an era of preferential access to sugar from 20 African-Caribbean-Pacific countries, and now the feeble Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) as a replacement for this preferential access.
But the more recent furor on sugar started when the European Commission announced, on June 22, 2005, its intention to reform the Common Market Organisation for sugar. Then the European Union decided to initially reduce by 36% the price of sugar that African-Caribbean-Pacific countries will receive.
Effectively, this decision brought to an end the era of preferential access to sugar from 20 African-Caribbean-Pacific countries. The preferential access was started in 1975, and the access really was for agreed quantities of sugar at guaranteed prices, negotiated annually. The preferential quota had an equivalence of some 1.3 million tonnes per year.
With the end of preferential access, the European Union (EU) also made available resources for adjustment and compensation from 2006 through 2013. And so the EU initially made an offer of six billion Euros to its own producers in Europe, but agreed only on 6 million Euros for all countries for 2006.
It is true that this European Union’s sugar regime reform contradicts binding commitments in the Sugar Protocol, the Cotonou Agreement, and the objectives of the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organisation. In fact, the European Union’s decision seemed to violate Article 36 (4) of the Cotonou Agreement.
The Lomé Convention governed the Sugar Protocol from 1975 through 2000. When the Lomé Convention expired in February 2000, it created the opportunity for reviewing the future of the European Union-African-Caribbean-Pacific relations.
And so, arising from this review was a new European Union-African-Caribbean-Pacific agreement, signed on June 23, 2000 in Cotonou, Benin, lasting for 20 years, from March 2000 through February 2020; this is the Cotonou Agreement.
But the Cotonou Agreement carries a revision clause which allows for a five-yearly review. Such a review commenced in May 2004 and ended on February 23, 2005.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the European Union’s announcement of a change in the Common Market Organisation for sugar came in June 2005, clearly opening the way for a new trade agreement.
And so efforts to put in place Economic Partnership Agreements as the new agreement began in earnest at that time. Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations were set in motion with West and Central Africa in October 2003, with Eastern and Southern Africa in February 2004, and with the Caribbean in April 2004.
It is true that Economic Partnership Agreements will replace the ‘trade’ chapters of the Cotonou Agreement.
But these ‘trade’ chapters have to become compatible with the World Trade Organisation law by December 31, 2007, and not WTO-Plus, as the proposed EPA now dictates.
The European Commission (EC), throughout its negotiations, pushed for WTO-plus commitments on services, intellectual property, competition, public procurement, investment, and e-commerce; but WTO rules only require the EPA to be WTO-compatible, not WTO-plus.
Prem Misir

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WTO rules only require the EPA to be WTO-compatible, not WTO-plus

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