From the European Union (EU) side there is no obstacle preventing the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Cariforum countries, Head of Delegation of the European Commission to Guyana Geert Heikens said.

Heikens was responding via a letter which appears in Stabroek News today (page 6) to a report carried in our edition yesterday captioned ‘Deferring of EPA signing on the horizon.’ In that report reference had been made to the text of the Cariforum-EPA not yet having been translated into the 23 languages of the EU. Heikens said that the text of the EPA was available in all the official languages of the European Union, and that that the EU Council of Ministers had authorized signature which was scheduled to take place in Barbados – not Brussels, as the report said – on September 2, 2008.

Stabroek News apologises for the errors.
Cariforum, representing the Caribbean, is the only one of six regions in the ACP grouping that trades with the EU which has negotiated an EPA. The other regions have concluded trade deals but are yet to conclude the complete EPA which includes a development dimension.