Suchergebnisse

This work traces the evolution of both the SADCC initiative, from its early roots, and European support for what turned out to be an innovative scheme in regional cooperation amongst ideologically diverse states. The study seeks to lay out the geo-political motivations which underlay the early and timely support extended by the Commission of the European Community to the initiative for regional cooperation in Southern Africa. It lays out the often differing motives which prompted support for regional cooperation in Southern Africa, both within the region and the international community. It then goes on to look more closely at how the SADCC states responded to South Africa's campaign of destabilisation and the attitude of the Commission and Member States of the European Community to this campaign of destabilisation

For a long time it has been necessary to move beyond sterile debates for or against Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The real issue is: what kind of EPAs will support African governments in their efforts to promote the structural transformation of their economies, so that they can move beyond the production of simple and unprocessed products to the production of a range of higher value products, for national, regional and international markets, and in the process help them tackle poverty and employment issues. This paper seeks to situate the ongoing EPA negotiations and debate around contentious issues in the context of the wider European Union (EU) trade policy and African aspirations for sustainable development and poverty reduction.

This paper seeks to look at certain fundamental features of the EU food and agricultural sector adjustment process as it manifests itself through the reform of the CAP. It highlights the shift in policy tools, from price support for agricultural products to income support for EU farmers and the shift in policy emphasis from the quantity of agricultural products to the quality of food and agriculturalproducts. It reviews the implications of this policy shift for the EU's diminishing tolerance of the use of trade policy tools as part of agricultural development policies in third countries. It highlights in passing the implications of these developments for the African food and agriculturalsectors, before drawing out some broad conclusions and recommendations.

Le présent document examine certains aspects fondamentauxdu processus d'ajustement du secteur agricole et alimentaire européen, dans le cadre de la réforme de la Politique agricole commune (PAC). Il met en évidence le changement d'outils politiques opéré par l'UE, illustré par l'abandon du soutien aux prix agricoles au profit du soutien aux revenus de ses agriculteurs, ainsi que par la réorientation de sa politique en faveur de la qualité des produits agricoles et alimentaires et au détriment de la quantité. De même, le document passe en revue les conséquences d'un tel changement, l'UE étant de moins en moins en faveur d'un recours aux mesures de politiquecommerciale dans les politiques de développement agricole en faveur de pays tiers. Il rappelle, au passage, les implications d'une telle évolution pour les secteurs agricole et alimentaire en Afrique, avant de tirer des conclusions et de formuler quelques recommandations d'ordre général.

The EU's common agricultural policy seriously distorted not only EU commodity markets but also many world markets, through the subsidised export of large volumes of commodities – produced at double (or even treble) – the economic cost. This is not contested. Amongst those affected wereAfrican farmers who suffered from the depression of world market prices for commodities that they could produce cheaply, such as maize, sugar and beef. With CAP reform, which should soon see all EU-produced commodities trading on the world market without the need for export subsidies, Europe argues that it is now no longer distorting world markets, and so no longer harming African producers. This paper demonstrates how untrue this is. On the one hand, because Europe continues to produce the commodities in question at the same or higher volume (thanks to income support for farmers), the impact on the world market is unchanged. On the other hand, concessions to ACP countries designed to help them under the old regime (such as the 'protocols' which enabled them to earn the inflated European prices for quotas of beef and sugar) are disappearing, and preferences over third countries are eroding as tariffs fall. Other elements of policy related to CAP reform, such as the increasingly strict EU food safety standards, and the raised competitiveness of EU processed foods as the price of European inputs falls (a disguised subsidy), are discussed. The paper concludes with some concrete examples of the impact of this on the South African confectionery industry.

Despite the announcement of a 'new trade strategy', EU agricultural trade policy has exhibited considerable consistency over several decades, always conditional on the CAP regime and the course of its reform. A 25-year, heavily subsidised transition, will shortly see European farmers (thanks to income support of up to 50% of their total income), able to enter the world market without export subsidies. Meanwhile the EC expects 'partner' countries in Africa (and the Caribbean and the Pacific) with still underdeveloped infrastructures, and provided with relatively trivial subsidies, to complete a similar process in a decade or so. The economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations are based on a shift from the Lomé Convention's non-reciprocity commitment to a basic regime of free trade between the EU and EPA regions, involving liberalisation of trade in goods, trade-related areas and services. Whereas Europe has already effectively integrated, few African regions have yet got very far in regional integration, but the EC is forcing the pace in negotiations so that there is a risk that integration will be with the EU rather than within a country's own region, and on the EU's terms. A 'development dimension' adds an element of window-dressing (or sugaring of the pill). This article considers the development programmes that the EU is promising in order to address infrastructural constraints in the partner countries, and the costs of adjustment to free trade, in particular the loss of state revenues generated from tariffs. The article concludes with an attempt to foresee the likely outcomes and implications of the negotiations, including the undermining of government revenues and the consequent increase in reliance on the private sector for many services, accelerated deindustrialisation, and the inhibiting of first-stage processing of agricultural commodities, the undermining of regional integration, the economic 'recolonisation' of Africa and the harming of efforts to promote national exploitation of economic resources.

Trade with Europe is currently more important for the African continent, and nearly every single country in it, than any other international economic links. Africa's future trade relationship with the European Union (EU) is now being decided in negotiations which are provoking intense debate, and to understand what is at issue it is necessary to locate these negotiations in the context of the EU's wider trade policy. This policy was recently reiterated in a more coherent and focused form in the European Commission's (EC's) October 2006 proposal for a new trade strategy. This paper seeks to review the main elements of this 'new' strategy before looking at how it impacts on the EU's approach to the negotiations for 'Economic Partnership Agreements' (EPAs) with four groupings of African countries.1 It closes by reviewing what this will probably mean for the Africa-EU trade relationship in the future in the context of the major trends in the current processes of negotiations.

With the UK presidency of the EU Council of Ministers pending (July 2005), EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson is coming under increased pressure to modify the European Commission's approach to Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Criticism and pressure for change is not only coming from an increasingly vocal and active campaign by non-governmental development agencies in the UK, Europe and Africa (see http://www.stopepa.org/ for details of the campaign), but also from several more official sources. These include the Africa Commission established by prime minister Tony Blair, the inquiry by the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development into EU-ACP EPA negotiations1 and the joint position paper adopted by the UK Department of Trade and Industry and Department for International Development.2

Commissioner Mandelson has responded to this criticism by modifying and extending the rhetoric on the centrality of development concerns to the EC's approach to EPA negotiations. However it is still unclear to what extent the Commissioner's rhetoric is being taken up in practice by EC trade negotiators and EC aid officials. As the Zambian trade minister, Dipak Patel, has recently declared:


what Peter has said in his speech to the LSE [London School of Economics] was excellent, but perhaps his negotiators need to read it more than we do.
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The June 26th 2003 EU Council Agreement on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy provides the basis for the EU's negotiating position in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture negotiations. This paper looks at the outcome of the final CAP-reform agreement in the areas of: • decoupling and cross compliance; • modulation and rural development; • the major sectoral reforms agreed; • with reference to the initial European Commission proposals, the extent of the changes introduced in the final agreement, and the broad implications of these changes for EU positions in the WTO agricultural negotiations on export subsidies, market access and domestic support to agriculture. The paper then goes on to consider the implications for ACP countries in terms of the challenges this will generate at the Cancun WTO Ministerial. It concludes by proposing options for ACP governments to pursue at Cancun with the aim of maintaining some economic space for national and regional agricultural and agro-based industrial development, in the face of a reformed CAP and the liberalisation of agricultural markets that are implicit in the WTO process. ; A discussion paper