There is life beyond the European Union: revisiting the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States

Abstract

The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group, established in June 1975 by the Georgetown Agreement, was generally seen as an emanation of the European Union (EU). This article presents a non-EU-centric perspective by discussing various initiatives aimed at fostering intra-ACP cooperation and promoting common ACP positions in international settings. Furthermore, it analyses various threats to the survival of the ACP Group, some linked to its allegedly ineffective performance as an organisation, others related to the rise of competitors, most notably the African Union. Importantly, it delves into the reform process that culminated in the adoption of the revised Georgetown Agreement in December 2019, which transformed the ACP Group into the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), with the aim of establishing it as a relevant and influential global actor and reducing its dependence on the EU. In revisiting the evolution of the OACPS, this article identifies an intentions–capability gap, specifically between the often grandiose statements of official discourse and the institutional and financial resources devoted to implementing stated objectives.

Keywords:

• ACP
• OACPS
• African Union
• Georgetown Agreement
• North–South relations
• South–South cooperation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This article uses the term ‘European Union’ (EU) to refer to the entity created by the Treaty of Maastricht of February 1992. For the sake of simplicity, it also refers to the European Economic Community (EEC), created by the Treaty of Rome of March 1957 and subsumed into the European Community (EC) by the Treaty of Maastricht as one of the three pillars of the EU.

2 The literature on ACP–EU relations is vast. For a review, see Carbone (2013, 2020) and Montoute and Virk (2017).

3 One of the main sources of information on the evolution of the ACP Group was The Courier. Published every two months between 1975 and 2003, it was funded through the European Development Fund and managed by the European Commission. It documented progress in ACP–EU cooperation, but mostly importantly it served to enhance the visibility and contributed to building the identity of the ACP Group. Unsurprisingly, its demise provoked discontent in the ACP Group. Relaunched in 2007, it was managed by the ACP Secretariat but still funded through the EDF, until it stopped publication in 2011.

4 This expression was firstly used by Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere. However, Nyerere did not refer to the ACP Group, as often believed, but to the G-77: ‘The Group of 77 developed out of a felt need for the Third World to speak with one voice at United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) conferences and other meetings concerned with world economic matters …. Ours is a kind of Trade Union of the Poor’ (Nyerere 1979, 62, 64).

5 The negotiations of the EPAs have been a pervasive source of tension between the ACP Group and the EU, to the point that at the end of 2020 only two of the seven regional EPAs had come into force (Carbone 2020). It should be noted that the EPAs are self-standing agreements, negotiated by individual ACP regions (or states), manifesting different levels of actorness and agency in their engagement with the EU. Nevertheless, the ACP Group has periodically raised concerns common to all EPAs, particularly with a view to enhancing their developmental dimension.

6 The 79 member states of the OACPS are grouped into six regions: Central Africa, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

7 The ACP Group has signed numerous cooperation agreements and memoranda of understanding with various international organisations, which were in part attracted by the availability of funds for intra-ACP cooperation. The ACP Group has observer status in the United Nations and in other international and regional bodies: UN Habitat, WTO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), UNCTAD, the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Agence Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) and the Commonwealth Secretariat. It has technical agreements with the World Customs Organization (WCO), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the World Bank (Bradley 2004; Van Reisen 2012; Nono 2015).

8 The African, Caribbean and Pacific Information Centre for South–South and Triangular Cooperation was inaugurated in October 2018 in Malabo. It is an initiative of Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who sees it as ‘the most salient token of Southern peoples and countries’ solidarity that is aimed at enhancing their respective autonomy and support their efforts to achieve the international Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) foreseen in the 2030 Agenda’ (InDepthNews, 15 August 2019).

9 The oft-cited words of former Director General of the WTO Pascal Lamy indicating that the ACP Group is ‘one of the more powerful and influential advocacy and negotiating arms in the WTO’ (cited in Horizons, June 2015, 10) may be somewhat exaggerated.

10 For instance, the OACPS does not coordinate in New York in view of UN meetings. Its members operate within other groupings, for example the African Union or the Alliance of Small Island States.

11 The solution, agreed upon in September 2018, was a two-track process for Africa’s relations with the EU: one through the AU, focusing on political relations at a continent-to-continent level; the other through the ACP Group, focusing on development aspects, mostly at a bilateral level (AU 2018b; Carbone 2019b).

12 Indeed, the ACP Group was transformed into OACPS, yet its power vis-à-vis its member states was largely left intact: as put by a Pacific ambassador, ‘we do not expect the revised Georgetown Agreement to guide bilateral relations between ACP states’ (Interview with Pacific ambassador, March 2020).

13 For an analysis of the main elements of the EU–OACPS Agreement, see Carbone (2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maurizio Carbone

Maurizio Carbone is Professor of international relations and development and Jean Monnet Professor of EU External Policies at the University of Glasgow. He has published on the EU’s relations with the developing world, particularly foreign aid and other development-related policies with a focus on Africa and the group of ACP states, and more generally on the politics of international development.