EC official doesn’t think Guyana can have goods-only EPA

The Deputy Director-General of Trade, European Commis-sion Karl Friedrich Falkenburg has said he does not feel that Guyana could have a goods-only agreement in the place of a full Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).

President Bharrat Jagdeo has said that he was not prepared to sign a full EPA but a goods-only agreement as suggested by a national consultation on the EPA held at the Guyana International Con-ference Centre last Friday, until a full agreement is renegotiated that is more development-oriented.  The President has also been tasked by the stakeholders at the consultation to ask his colleagues to put on hold the signing of the agreement until after Cari-forum leaders would have met with their counterparts at the ACP (African, Caribbean, Pacific) Heads of Govern-ment meeting to be held in Accra, Ghana on October 2, 2008 where the EPAs are scheduled to be discussed.

Answering the question posed by President Jagdeo at the one-day consultation as to whether Guyana could sign only a goods-only agreement until a full EPA is renegotiated, Falkenburg said that the goods-only deal was not a development supportive solution. “Honestly my answer is no,” he said adding, “I don’t see how that is possible.”

Consequences
However, he did not answer the question put by the President on what the consequences would be for Guyana or the region as a whole if Guyana or any other country does not sign the EPA or would want to sign only a goods-only agreement.
Meanwhile, the President who is scheduled to travel to Barbados today to attend the Caricom Heads of Government Special Meeting told  Stabroek News last evening that throughout the formulation of the EPA the negotiations were very fluid and this was a matter of concern. Even when the EPA was initialed in December, he said that he expressed his concerns on a number of issues and indicated that he was participating because of the threat of the imposition of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) which would see Guyana’s exports to Europe being treated in the same manner as the Most Favoured Nations or as equal partners.

Because of the fluidity of the negotiations, Jagdeo said that even at the last minute before the initialing of the EPA the final document looked different from what it was in the beginning. For instance, he said that the ‘Singapore Issues’ were only dealt with within the last six months of the negotiations.
The Singapore Issues which came out of the WTO ministerial conference in 1996 in Singapore deals with the issues of transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation, (customs issues), trade and investment, and trade and competition. These issues were pushed at successive ministerial meetings by the EU, Japan and Korea, and opposed by most developing countries.

Facing
devastating tariffs
Asked whether the EU rammed the EPA down the throats of the Cariforum countries, the President said that the EU had superior bargaining powers and the threat of facing devastating tariffs was always hanging over the heads of the Caribbean negotiators led by the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) like the sword of Damocles.

He has said that in the same manner that the African and Pacific regions were allowed to sign only interim trade deals and given time within which to hammer out a full EPA, Cariforum could also be granted such a concession.

Speaking on the Cotonou goods-only agreement which had tied Europe and the ACP until the end of 2007, Falkenburg said it had not produced the development supportive outcomes that they had all hoped for.

“We needed to make sure that there are conditions for doing business, for creating new business opportunities for attracting investments, to make use of what such a business environment could offer for development. That is what we think is necessary and in such a framework to maintain preferential market access,” he added.
Falkenburg said that the Cariforum countries, that is Caricom countries and the Dominican Republic, have negotiated for four years the current EPA, compromised in a range of areas, opened access in services, and made commitments that were “explicitly sought for by Cariforum countries” in the investment sector and that were now contained in the agreement.

When the EU and Cariforum countries initialed the package in December, he said they were all aware that it was not a legally binding international commitment but they were all very clear that it meant that the negotiators had identified the outcome of the negotiations which were recommended by the respective constituencies for their governments to approve.

Falkenburg said that on a good-faith basis, Europe had taken the unprecedented decision to grant market access from January 1, 2008 to its ACP partners. Europe, he said, took that action without any international legal basis and as such was now in a vulnerable position. “It has no legal basis in Geneva. The first country that challenges it would bring it (down).”

He declared that the only way in which the European Union could get away with granting market access was by urgently signing the EPA and notifying the World Trade Organisation in Geneva if the EU were to continue to allow rice, rum and sugar or other products from the region on a preferential basis into the EU. “If we don’t do it we cannot continue to extend this market access,” he said.

Falkenburg, who was one of two speakers who spoke in favour of the EPA as against eight – including President Jagdeo at the head – who were for the signing of the EPA to be put on hold until issues of concern to Guyana were addressed, said “This is not of my bullying. The EU has to play within the confines of a multilateral trading system.  He added that the EU and the ACP countries collectively sought derogation for its original preferential trading regime and obtained it until the end of 2007. They obtained the derogation but in the process granted equal access to some other developing countries which helped in eroding the preferences the ACP countries had enjoyed exclusively.

Zero chances

The chances of getting additional time or extension for preferential treatment at the level of the WTO, he said, are not good. “The chances of getting it are zero,” he said.

He said that during the four years of negotiations Cariforum and EU  negotiators looked at the issues of maintaining preferences from every possible angle and concluded that the chances of getting more time from “your partners is not there.”

He said that Guyana was not being forced to sign anything. “You will have to make your decision. I still believe that the opportunity that Europe is offering you in the EPA is extremely valuable – duty free/quota free, market access for rice, sugar and rum is valuable for many of your companies and employees.” All of this, he said would be put into in question, if at this stage of the process, Guyana opts out of the EPA.

“This is not a threat. This is not an EU community choice. This is what we will have to do within the WTO rules to which we have all subscribed…” he said.
Noting that based on the discussions it would appear that there were no negotiations between Cariforum and the EU and that the EU was forcing the EPA on the region, Falkenburg reiterated that the negotiating teams involved technical teams and policy makers. In the case of the Caribbean, there were negotiating sessions that involved technical and ministerial teams and the heads of government.

He said too, that, there were a fair number of meetings of civil society and social partners over the past four years of negotiations and he took part in one such in Barbados early last year before the text of the EPA was decided. “That is not a description of a diktat to me,” he said, adding that many of the meetings produced very good supportive outcome in terms of what Europe and Cariforum wanted to achieve in the EPA.