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March 11, 2016
Renounce all interim EPAs, ACP heads told
Accra, Oct.2, Ghanadot/GNA - Heads of African Caribbean
Pacific (ACP) countries attending the sixth ACP Summit in
Accra, has been called upon to renounce all interim and
comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)
agreements and resolve to negotiate fresh EPAs on
'reciprocal goods only' with the EU
The call came from a coalition of three labour
organizations, comprised of the African Regional
Organization of International Trade Union Confederation (AROITUC),
the Ghana Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Ghana
Federation of Labour (GFL).
The call came at a time when some ACP countries, including
Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire had broken ranks with other members
of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
and signed separate interim EPAs with the EU, which
contravened the original intention for EPAs to be signed
between the EU on one hand and regional bodies within the
ACP on the other.
Under the interim EPAs, 80 per cent of exports from EU into
the developing countries would be on duty-free, tariff-free
basis in exchange for 100 per cent market access for
developing countries exports to the EU.
But Mr Kwesi Adu Amankwah, Secretary-General of AROITUC,
told journalists that the EPAs, as they were now, threatened
to completely destroy the production base of the ACP
countries and also to make it impossible for those countries
to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
He explained that the 100 per cent market access for
developing countries export in the EU was meaningless
because those products faced stiff competition from similar
heavily subsidized EU-made products.
Meanwhile the ACP had supply constraints and could,
therefore, not take full advantage of that offer to the same
magnitude that the EU companies took advantage of the 80 per
cent access to ACP markets.
"We, therefore, call on our Heads of State to reclaim the
destiny and sovereignty of our countries by taking a
collective decision on the EPAs.
"This decision must be two fold - renounce all interim and
comprehensive EPAs and resolve to negotiate and agree a
non-reciprocal goods only EPAs with the EU," he said.
Mr Amankwah noted that the removal of customs duties on as
much as 80 per cent of imports from the EU would deny ACP
countries of the most reliable sources of revenue as most
ACP countries depended on customs tariffs for half of their
locally generated revenues.
He urged Heads of ACP countries to learn a lesson from the
ongoing world financial crisis due to the uncontrolled and
liberal market activities in the United States of America
and to protect their markets from the extreme
liberalizations that the EPAs proposed.
He noted that for the past six years since EPA negotiations
began, no impact assessment had been done to assess how
their implementation would affect the economies of ACP
countries and yet the EU insisted that the EPA be signed,
notwithstanding.
Mr Amankwah deplored the attitude the European Commission
(EC) throughout the EPA negotiations, saying the EC's
willingness to abandon the regional negotiations framework
and to sign separate interim EPAs with individual countries,
was a clear sign that the EC was not interested in the
regional integration of ACP States.
"In an addition the attempt by the EC to cast all critical
voices represented by civil society, particularly on the
EPAs, as disgruntled, underscored the desperation on the
part of the EC and clearly undermines the spirit of the
Cotonou Partnership Agreement that calls for the involvement
of non-state actors," he said.
He noted that the posture of the EU throughout the EPA
negotiations suggested that they knew what was good from ACP
countries and that the governments and civil society in ACP
countries knew nothing, adding that the EPA also sought to
render ACP government ineffective by taking away their
regulatory powers.
Mr Amankwah said the ongoing ACP summit provided an
opportunity for members States to take a firm and united
decision on the EPAs with the view to saving their economies
from inimical invasion by the European multi-nationals.
GNA
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