New EU-Cariforum agreement coming into force when both sides have less interest in implementing it

Few people in the Caribbean are likely to have ever heard of the Joint Caribbean EU Partnership Strategy. Agreed on November 19, it establishes a new political framework within which all future co-operation between Europe and the entire Caribbean region is intended to take place.

The document, which has been under negotiation between Cariforum and the European Union since May 2010, follows from a decision taken more than two years ago at an EU-Cariforum Summit in Madrid to establish core areas of mutual interest: namely, regional integration, the reconstruction of Haiti, climate change and