Horse-trading on EU–African Economic Partnership Agreements

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Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the valuable comments of an anonymous reviewer as well as those of Gary Littlejohn, the ROAPE Briefings and Debates editor.

Note on contributor

Dirk Kohnert, economist, was deputy director of the Institute of African Affairs (IAA) at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) from 1991 to 2011. He retired in 2011 but remained an associated research fellow at the Institute. Previously, he was a lecturer in development planning and senior development expert in several African countries.

Notes

1. ‘Options could include: improving the EU's Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) schemes by, for instance, giving all countries in “LDC customs unions' Everything But Arms (EBA) treatment, or improving the EU's GSP+ scheme. Alternatively, the EU could demand a waiver from WTO members for specific developing country regions, as the US has successfully done’ (EU 2014, i, 6).

2. Including the 15 ECOWAS members: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, plus Mauritania, which withdrew in 2000 to join the Arab Maghreb Union.

3. Of the four non-LDC members, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire signed ‘interim EPAs' (which, however, were never ratified) in order to not lose their privileged market access. Cape Verde obtained the GSP+ status in 2011, granted unilaterally by the EU to developing countries committed to good governance and respect of human rights, while Nigeria fell back on less favourable EU market access under the GSP (Uexkull 2012, 2).

4. As stated by the EU delegation to Sierra Leone in its online contribution ‘The EU–ECOWAS Economic Partnership Agreement’, accessed June 18, 2014. http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/sierra_leone/eu_sierra_leone/political_relations/eu_ecowas/index_en.htm

5. These statements are difficult to follow literally because one of the major aims of EBA from the outset was to extend preferences that were granted until 2000 to ACP states only, to all LDCs, i.e. currently 49 LDCs worldwide, an aim which was fulfilled already after a transitional period for the most sensitive sectors, bananas, rice and sugar, in 2009 (Young and Peterson 2013, 506). What was probably meant by the EU was to extend these preferences not only to all LDCs but also to ‘lower-middle income economies' such as Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Cape Verde, but possibly also Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras and Indonesia. At least, a statement of the European Commission points in this direction, namely that as of 1 January 2014 a new GSP would apply in the EU, strengthening the EBA by ‘focussing preferences on those that need them most (lower-income economies and LDCs), the new GSP will have fewer beneficiaries. This will reduce competitive pressure on LDCs and make the preferences for LDCs more meaningful – providing much more opportunity to export’ (EC 2014; ‘Everything But Arms (EBA) – Who Benefits?’ accessed: 18 June 2014. http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/april/tradoc_150983.pdf).