Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) which share similar ideals with the World Trade Organization (WTO) has added to claims of disintegration within international trade law. Notwithstanding the ambiguity surrounding the reading of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XXIV on RTAs, WTO members are continuously negotiating RTAs with objectives which have so far not received universal acceptance under the WTO treaty system. In the context of European Union (EU)-Africa trade relations, the December 2007 EU-Africa summit was expected to be an appropriate venue for leaders from both sides to resolve the controversy surrounding the idea of development-friendly free trade agreements between the contracting parties. But, the summit was wrapped up without achieving any clear answer to this issue. Similarly, at the multilateral level, i.e. the WTO Doha Development Round negotiations, which the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States have sponsored, numerous development-friendly proposals on RTAs stalled since July 2006. Consequently, in view of this controversy, if development concerns can be factored into economic partnership agreements (EPAs), what would be an acceptable threshold for such RTAs to conform to GATT Article XXIV requirements of "substantially all trade" and "reasonable period of time"? This paper discusses the idea of development and WTO compatibility in the context of the EU-Africa Economic Partnership negotiations. In view of the flawed dispute settlement provisions under the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA), the paper further tries to answer the question of whether the CPA contains rights and obligations that need protection by individual EU member courts and may necessarily be enforced before the European Court of Justice. The paper ends with some thoughts on the post-EPAs adjustment programme.

This article provides a detailed analysis of the trade-related aspects of economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations for the six Africa–Caribbean–Pacific (ACP) negotiation groups including ECOWAS, CEMAC+, COMESA, SADC, CARIFORUM and Pacific. We use a partial equilibrium model—focusing on the demand side—at the HS6 level (covering 5,113 HS6 products). Two lists of sensitive products are constructed: focusing on the agricultural sectors and tariff revenue preservation. For the European Union (EU), EPAs must translate into 90% fully liberalised bilateral trade to be World Trade Organisation compatible. We use this criterion to simulate EPAs for each negotiating regional block. ACP exports to the EU are forecast to be 10% higher with EPAs, than under the generalised system of preference 'Everything But Arms' option. ACP countries, especially African ones, are forecast to lose an average of 71% of tariff revenues on EU imports in the long run. Imports from other regions of the world will continue to provide tariff revenues. Thus, if we compute tariff revenue losses on total ACP imports, losses are only 25% on average over the long run and as low as 19% if the product lists are optimised. The final impact depends on the importance of tariffs in government revenue and on potential compensatory effects. However, this long-term and less visible effect will depend mainly on the capacity of each ACP country to reorganise its fiscal base. ; ISI; IFPRI3 ; MTID ; PR

AbstractThis Policy Arena has two main objectives. First, it seeks to unravel how the partnership between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group has evolved since the adoption of the Cotonou Agreement in 2000, including its 2005 and 2010 reviews and the implementation of its three key pillars (development cooperation, trade and political dialogue). Second, it explores the prospects of EU‐ACP relations in the medium to long term. In particular, it discusses whether the ACP‐EU cooperation framework is still relevant in the light of a number of global changes and, more specifically, whether the ACP configuration is still useful to its members. To address these issues, both the EU and the ACP Group have established two working groups. Within the ACP, voices are critical of the EU‐ACP partnership, but there appears to be more willingness to reform and renew it. Within the EU, the record of the Cotonou Agreement is seen more positively, but there seems to be less willingness to preserve it. The third review of the Cotonou Agreement to be finalised by 2015, and more generally its expiration in 2020, provides an opportunity – to which this Policy Arena seeks to contribute – to rethink the EU‐ACP cooperation model. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Economic opinion is in the process of re-interpreting low levels of uptake of non-reciprocal pre-ferential trade agreements (PTAs) partly in terms of administrative barriers to preference utiliza-tion. Primary amongst these barriers are Rules of Origin. This paper reviews the literature on Rules of Origin as administrative barriers to the utilization of preferences accorded to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries under the Coutonou Agreement, before going on to ex-amine current revisions of EU PTA Rules of Origin. These are embodied in a new (so-called 'Cotonou+') set of rules for the interim EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and a second proposed set of rules for the EU's Generalised System of Preference (GSP) arrange-ments, including Everything But Arms. The Cotonou+ rules include some important concessions by the EU, especially for those ACP countries that do not have Least Developed Country (LDC) status, but are supposed to be re-negotiated within a fixed period in line the new EU GSP rules. However, the new GSP rules as revealed in the EU Draft Regulation of 2007 contain no real concessions for non-LDCs, and they introduce potentially trade-restrictive administrative require-ments. These rules are currently (July 2008) under reconsideration by the EU, but it is clear that this exercise does not cover these elements. For this reason, harmonisation of the Cotonou+ and new GSP rules may be a source a serious discord in the negotiation of full EPAs, a process which is supposed to occur during 2008.