EPA CONCERNS

Sep 09, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The President of Guyana in his opening remarks to the national consultations on the Economic Partnership Agreement indicated that he was still struggling with what approach to take in his presentation.

That being the case, the President should have opted to say nothing. He should have ventured silence until such time as his thoughts were fully crystallized.

It was indeed regrettable that on such an important subject as these consultations, the President clearly was unprepared and unrehearsed in his presentation. In such a situation, he was bound to disappoint, and this is just what happened.

He did in the process outline four of his principal concerns about the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). By the time he ended giving the first, it seemed that the number of concerns had increased.

One expected that the President in his address would have concentrated on the effects of the EPA on Guyana’s primary exports.

After all, it has been Guyana’s need for the lucrative and assured European market which has always formed the substance of our national interests as it relates to the European Community. The President however listed as his first concern the bad-faith negotiations by the EU.

He listed amongst the examples of this historic bad faith, the unilateral repudiation of the Sugar Protocol which was supposed to have been for an indefinite duration.

The first point I wish to make on this is that there was a context to the repudiation. The President was well aware that the protocol was over twenty years old and therefore could no longer insulate itself from adaptation.

After all, indefinite duration does not mean permanent, and while the Europeans did intend for it to be an extended agreement, surely no trade agreement in a rapidly changing global economy can be expected to be for all eternity.

The second point is that there was a WTO challenge against the Europeans which led to the problems with the sugar protocol and therefore it is not accurate to simply say it was unilaterally repudiated.

But even if it were, the Europeans did offer proposals that allowed the changes to be phased in, and did offer developmental assistance to those countries likely to be affected by the revised arrangements.

Such assistance may have fallen far short of the mendicant expectations of some states but the Europeans cannot be said to have simply abandoned sugar-producing nations.

The President, in stressing this first point about bad faith negotiation, also referred to the fact that the EPA is characterized by an erosion of preferences when under the Cotonou Agreement, there were assurances of WTO compatibility and preservation of benefits.

I do not know if after all that the region has experienced in its turbulent relationship with Europe over the past ten years, whether the President was still hoping for quota fee, duty free and preferential prices.

The age of preference died a long time ago and it did not die because of the waning solidarity between Africa and the Caribbean.

It died because the global NGO movement had developed a strong advocacy for poor countries to have duty free and quota free access to the European Union. The ‘Everything But Arms’ (EBA) Agreement signaled the demise of the age of preferential prices.

The writing was clearly on the wall after the challenge to the European Sugar Regime and after the movements towards the ‘Everything But Arms’ Agreement. Preferences would thus have to take the forms of access and duty free entry and not through prices.

I really expected that the President would have raised a storm over the EPA’s treatment of sugar and rice. I believe this should have been the principal criticism of the agreement.

I was thus disappointed when the President gave as his second concern the lack of a social impact assessment of the agreement.

Such an assessment is not the responsibility of the Europeans. This, however, seems to be a point thrown in just to buffer the region’s case.

How for example does the President know that some of his concerns over the EPA have merit? Has he done a social impact assessment?

The third concern of the Head of State was the need for developmental assistance. The fourth point which he said was his greatest concern was the impact of the EPA on the regional integration process because of the different liberalization schedules under the agreement. According to the President, this could mean that there will be no common tariff within the region.

This is a moot point. The region has the most uncommon of common tariffs. And this is due to the historic differential levels of liberalization within the region.

Some countries have always been ahead of others in this race and it is precisely for this reason why there had to be different schedules under the EPA.

I was disappointed by the President’s presentation. I was hoping that the non–immediate liberalized access to Europe for Guyana’s sugar and rice would have been his overwhelming concern.

I however now better understand where the President is coming from. But more on that at another time, when I expound on the diplomatic mess that this whole debate exposed.

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