For Better or for Worse: The EU's Embrace of European Partnership Agreements
In: Studia diplomatica: Brussels journal of international relations, Band 59, Heft 2, S. 5-22
ISSN: 0770-2965
The Cocotou Agreement (Benin, June 23, 2000) promotes sustainable development & a contribution by the EU to poverty eradication in ACP countries (African, Caribbean & Pacific countries that signed the Lome Convention [Togo, 1975]). Since developmental impact of EPA's (European Partnership Agreements) is uncertain, ATA's (Alternative Trade Agreements) have been offered, whose developmental impacts are hard to assess & ongoing negotiations make it hard to explore alternatives to EPA's. The EU seems driven by a genuine concern for development of ACP countries, as well as by its desire to comply with WTO rules. Denying non-reciprocal trade preferences to all developing countries, it chose, however, to render its preferential relationship with ACP countries reciprocal. The author states this to be a developmental-unfriendly choice & that in further WTO negotiations the EU will make ACP-unfriendly choices to protect its own domestic agriculture. O. van Zijl