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AbstractThe European Union's Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group are touted as a new form of equitable engagement. However, many argue that the EPAs simply substitute a different form of political and economic domination. In this paper, we consider if the siting of meetings has a substantive impact on EPA outcomes or media reporting thereof. Using a difference‐in‐difference like approach we evaluate if the tone and polarity of media reports about the EPAs during periods of 'home' meetings in the ACP countries differs from media reports during 'away' meetings in the EU. Using two different datasets we arrive at differing results, leading to inconclusive overall findings. While we suspect that the alternating meeting site norm has implications for EPA process and outcomes, further research will be needed to uncover the precise nature of these effects.

The European Union is currently negotiating free trade agreements, called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), with African countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. The paper empirically assesses the impact of the EPAs on trade flows and government revenue for 14 West African countries. The results indicate that the decline in import duties due to the preferential tariff elimination might be of some cause for concern and that complementary fiscal and economic policies have to be implemented before or at the time the EPAs come into force.

While the European Community has exclusive competence for trade policy, the competence over development policy is shared with member states of the European Union (EU).Given that trade is communitarised, it could be assumed that it is a strong instrument for the EU that can be well used for development. Trade is a particularly prominent feature of the EU's relations to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of developing countries, and Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) are the envisaged new trade pillar of ACP-EU-cooperation. This study analyses the development relevance of the EU's trade policy towards the ACP countries as formulated in the EPA, with a view to drawing conclusions on how to strengthen the trade development nexus. It specifically assesses the way in which the EU as a multilevel system has operated in the EPA negotiations. It is notably argued that the EU system needs to be more flexible to respond to issues of development concern in the trade negotiations, e.g. market access and support measures for ACP states. Efforts are furthermore required to improve the coordination of European policy-making on trade and development. Both the EU's communitarian and bilateral policies will need to engage in a more complementary fashion to support productive and trading capacities in the ACP and developing countries.

The Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA), which governs relations between the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group and the European Union (EU), will expire in the year 2020. While the three pillars of this framework addressing political dialogue, development cooperation and trade are generally considered to have served their purpose well, there are clear signs that significant changes within the ACP group, the EU and the wider international landscape demand a different articulation of the relationship. A tacit understanding among Europeans is that the ball is in the ACP's corner in terms of defining and determining their own future as a group and its relationship vis-à-vis the EU as such. However, a momentum needs to be built for the coming 2015 revision of the Cotonou Agreement with a view to a plausible post-2020 scenario, in which the EU also needs to set out its own desires and priorities in giving shape to the cooperation. In previous years the EU Member States increasingly "outsourced" the management of the partnership to the European Commission, but there is a gradually growing recognition that the CPA is presently the principal functioning vehicle guiding EUAfrica relations. European perceptions on the future of the Cotonou Agreement point to two sets of arguments, namely: Reasons to do away with the ACP-EU partnership: Weak rationale to keep a common framework with these very different regions, combined with weak evidence of the development of an ACP identity or intra-ACP trade; Decreasing relevance of ex-colonial ties, particularly in the context of an enlarged EU, but also more generally of the agreement's strong focus on official development assistance; Poor track record in shaping joint positions and interventions at international fora. Elements in the partnership deemed worth preserving: Legally binding nature that favours political dialogue as well as predictability and strategy ownership in development cooperation; A relatively strong performance of the European Development Fund (EDF) compared to other EU development cooperation instruments, combined with its multi-stakeholder approach to the design and management of development strategies; Potential alliance for global public goods provision. Despite the fact that there is not yet an official position from the EU nor its Member States on what should happen after the CPA expires, European actors (European Commission, European Parliament, Member States) seem to be inclined to move towards a more regional approach of the Union's external relations while maintaining the valuable aspects of the present setup. While the EU's declining strategic interest in the Caribbean – and especially the Pacific – is no secret, too rejectionist a stance towards the cooperation framework by EU Member States could seriously harm the promotion of their values and interests in Africa. The EU would currently seem most inclined to preserve key elements of the CPA in a "light version" of the current ACP-EU agreement, by transferring those elements into separate EU regional strategies towards Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, or a combination of both. European policy discussions on this matter are also long overdue, given that the preparations for the third revision of the CPA in 2015 will be a key "warming-up session" for the negotiations for post-2020. The EPA negotiations have seriously and negatively affected ACPEU relations in the recent past and could also harm the EU's own position and trade with Africa in the medium- to long term if continued in the same manner.

The partnership between the EU and the ACP countries (that include 38 of the world's 49 least developed countries) has a long standing history and was renewed in 2000 with the Cotonou Agreement. Furthermore, the European Commission has become the world's fifth largest donor of development aid - and therefore one of the most important - in the 1990's. When total aid is looked at the ACP countries are disproportionally among those receiving the most foreign aid per capita in the world and hence the effects of European aid are of special relevance for them. The aim of this paper is therefore to investigate the effect European aid has on investment in the ACP countries. It contributes to the ongoing debate on aid effectiveness by arguing that the impact f aid does not only depend on the characteristics of the recipient but also of the donor. The EU-ACP Partnership Agreement could increase incentives for private investment in the ACP countries either through direct support measures or more indirectly through complementary spending for infrastructure and administration. The special private sector chapter in the Cotonou Agreement makes it visible that private sector support is a primary objective and brings the existing provisions into a more coherent and refined framework. However, given the limited funds that were available under the Lomé Conventions direct investment support cannot be expected to increase total investment considerably. The empirical findings show that total aid has a positive but declining effect on the share of gross domestic investment in GDP. The effect of aid from the European Commission on gross domestic investment seems to be smaller partly due to its allocation towards ACP countries with a relatively poor investment performance. ; Die Partnerschaft zwischen EU und AKP-Staaten (von denen 38 zu den 49 am wenigsten entwickelten Ländern gehören) hat eine langjährige Geschichte und wurde im Jahre 2000 mit dem Cotonou Abkommen erneuert. Zudem hat sich die Europäische Kommission in den 90er Jahren zum fünftgrößten Geber von Entwicklungshilfe in der Welt entwickelt. Die AKP-Staaten liegen bei Betrachtung der Gesamthilfe überproportional unter denen, welche die meiste Entwicklungshilfe pro Kopf in der Welt erhalten. Es werden daher die Auswirkungen der EU-Hilfe insbesondere auf die Investitionen in den AKP Staaten untersucht. Damit wird ein Beitrag zu der gegenwärtigen Debatte über die Wirksamkeit von Entwicklungshilfe geleistet. Es wird argumentiert dass die Wirksamkeit von Hilfe nicht nur von den Gegebenheiten im Empfängerland, sonder auch vom Geber abhängt. Das Abkommen von Cotonou soll die Anreize für Privatinvestitionen in den AKP-Staaten steigern, entweder durch direkte Förderungsmaßnahmen oder indirekt durch ergänzende Ausgaben für Infrastruktur und Administration. Das Sonderkapitel über den Privatsektor im Cotonou-Abkommen macht deutlich, dass die Unterstützung des privaten Sektors ein primäres Ziel ist und bringt die bestehenden Bestimmungen in einen kohärenten und verbesserten Rahmen. Einer der Schwerpunktsektoren ist daher die Förderung von Investitionen und privatem Sektor. Bei den begrenzten Geldmitteln, die durch die Lomé-Abkommen verfügbar waren, kann allerdings nicht erwartet werden, dass die Förderung direkter Investitionen die Gesamtinvestitionen wesentlich steigert. Die empirischen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Gesamthilfe einen positiven, aber sinkenden Einfluss auf den Anteil der inländischen Investitionen am BSP hat. Die Auswirkungen der EU-Hilfe auf Investitionen in den AKP Staaten sind weniger stark. Dies kann insbesondere auf die stärkere Ausrichtung der EU-Zusammenarbeit auf die AKP Staaten mit schlechteren allgemeinen Investitionsbedingungen zurückgeführt werden.