Post-Lomé: The European Union and the South

The Lomé Convention is a trade and development co-operation agreement between the 15 member states of the European Union (EU) and 71 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. On 30 September 1998 the EU and ACP started negotiating a successor agreement to the fourth Lomé Convention. This paper introduces a 'regulation approach' to a political economy examination of the EU's new trade priorities for the developing world. The paper aims to evaluate the extent to which the Union's post-Lomé strategy, with its commitment to multilateralism, differentiation and regionalism, reflects a fundamental change in the nature of contemporary international economy and society. The EU argues that multilateralism, driven by globalisation and policed by multilateral agencies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), has served to undermine Lomé. This paper argues that multilateral principles, and in particular WTO compliance, are at the very centre of the present post-Lomé negotiations because the EU, indirectly supported by the USA, put them there. The Union's new strategy, to create a series of free trade areas linking Europe with regional groupings of ACP states, has the potential to damage the cause of regional solidarity among developing countries.