STOP EPAs

international | eu | news report Sunday April 24, 2005 20:43 by Garret Fitzpatrick

Aid and Trade: Giving with one hand and taking away with the other

Economic Partnership Agreements are new free trade agreements between the EU and a group of developing countries in Africa, the Carribean and the Pacific (APC). They are to be operative from the end of 2007, but the poorest countires already have supposed access to EU markets, so there is little gain for them in EPAs.

Under EPAs developing countries must open up their markets even more than is required by the WTO.

This involves
- fully eliminating import duties and quotas on imports
- progressive liberalisation of services
- opening up of capital markets
- liberalising the three 'new issues' refused by them at the WTO in Cancun.

Shamefully, this is being negotiated under the EU's aid package - the Cotonou Agreement - which is supposed to be poverty focused.

Act on line to stop these unfair agreements, which will be damaging to the world's poorest countries:
http://www.comhlamh.org/campaigns/383