Caribbean nations need to create consensus-driven models of development
By David Jessop (Executive Director of the Caribbean Council for Europe)
‘International NGO knocks EPA’; ‘Caribbean EPA held up as a model’; ‘Bernal departs Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery’: so read just three of the many thousands of headlines that accompany the hundreds of thousands of words about the Caribbean’s soon to be signed Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe.
They reflect an increasingly bitter divide over the benefits and failings of what has been negotiated as well as providing an opportunity for long-held political, academic and personal animosities to be deployed in a very public way. Some of the comment is important and reflects legitimate concerns about issues ranging from the broader implications of the EPA’s MFN provisions and future relations with other developing countries to, for instance, the shortness of the agreed period of entry into Europe for Caribbean musicians and entertainers.
