The WTO incompatibility of the Lomé Convention trade provisions
This paper considers the issues involved in the Lomé Convention's trade preference system and what possible avenues are available to the European Union (EU) and the seventy-one African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states in assuring the World Trade Organisation (WTO) compatibility of the post-Lomé trade arrangement. The implicit assumption behind the analysis is that the EU still wishes to maintain the trade preference arrangements or the political and economic relations that currently exist between the ACP and the EU. There is ample evidence that the EU has greatly diminished political and economic interests in the continuation of this trade regime which maintains the ACP states at the peak of its 'pyramid of EC trade privilege'.