The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) being currently discussed between the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) and the European Union (EU)are essentially free trade areas (FTAs) in which farmers, producers and companies from the poorest Eastern and Southern African (ESA) countries are set to compete openly even for their domestic markets with their richest, highly industrialized and often subsidized counterparts in the EU.

Although the EPAs negotiations are presented as a win-win situation, it must be understood that they are between unequal partners. The processes leading to the negotiations, the host of unresolved issues being swept under the carpet, and the manner the EU is fast tracking them, can only go in one direction - and that is to the benefit of the EU, and at the cost of the poor ACP countries that are compelled to bear all the costs of adjustment.

The ESA that consist of 16 countries, 12 of which are least developing countries (LDCs) has the lowest human development indicators coupled with severe and widespread poverty. Some member-states experiences negative economic growths and falling disposable incomes. In this group, 1 in 6 children dies before their firth birthday and more than half of the population is still living on less than US$1 a day; the EU consists of mainly developed economies, of which 5 member-states are among the 10 largest economies in the whole world. The economies enjoy high standard of living.

EPA negotiations involve unequal terms whose final outcomes will undermine efforts to alleviate poverty and facilitate development.

– Do you know that EUÂ’s role, as a major aid donor to most of the countries involved in negotiations, tends to influence the process?

– Do you know that even though it is argued by the EU that their concern is development, it is their DG Trade not their DG Development that leads the EPA negotiations?

The EU is in hurry - in a state of emergency

Their capital owners are currently suffering a profitability crisis in their markets. They are in need of expansion to developing countries.

So while the EU under the Lome` Convention needed cheap commodities for their industries, they are now in need of unrestricted markets as well. This is why the EU now argues for reciprocal trade. At the same time, the ESA countries have not yet calcultated what benefits - if any - the FTAs will bring their countries or their region.

EU knows that the EPAs outcome will benefit their firms, producers, consumers, etc:

– Do you know that EU wants ESA countries to liberalize 90% of their markets over a period of 10 years despite the fact that 12 countries are LDCs, which have failed to benefit from the Everything But Arms(EBA) due to strict rules of origin and serious supply-side > constraint?

– Do you know that there is little chance that ESA firms will be able to penetrate the EU market as well as partake the EU government procurement?

– Do you know that clustering 12 LDCs and 4 non-LDCs for the purposes of negotiations may actually inadvertently increase regional tensions rather than promote regional integration?

– Do you know that there are wide disparities between the costs and benefits of EPAs for different countries within the ESA group, and between EU and ESA?

 ESA victories in international trade negotiations ’forgotten’ in EPAs

ESA countries, together with other developing nations had successfully rejected to expand the trade agenda in the WTO with the so-called

Singapore issues. They also have certain rights under the WTO the EU want to renegotiate under the EPAs:

– Do you know that EU is using EPAs to bring the Singapore issues back on the agenda despite the serious developmental implications to all developing nations?

 Likely negative outcome for ESA countries

Most governments are cash-strapped, and currently their fiscal budgets are donor funded. This has already serious socio-economic and political ramifications in the ESA region in particular and the entire African continent in general.

– Do you know that it’s a huge financial burden for countries with small trading levels to implement trade facilitation including infrastructure development and continued management costs necessary to facilitate trade in the manner the EU wants to ensure their imports to ESA markets?

– Do you know that ESA countries will be forced to open up their health, education, housing, water provisions and sanitation to other EU competitor?

– Do you know that most ESA countries have large deficits in social and human capital coupled with lack of skilled workers, a development that is worsened by the HIV/AIDS pandemic?

– Do you know that EU try to strengthen the ESA patent legislation so that farmers rights and community knowledge will be violated by foreign patenting?

Complete free trade between unequal partners will lead to substantial negative development outcomes. The experience of implementing structural adjustment policies under the tutelage of the IMF and WB shows that premature market opening not only lead to the displacement of uncompetitive domestic producers, but also allow resources to leave the country.

– Do you know that in history, the most efficient industries in developing countries were the first to be out-competed and close under unequal international competition?

– Do you know that EPAs will result in de-industrialization, downsizing, massive unemployment (this has political implications), falling trade volumes and foreign earnings, etc.?

– Do you know that the neo-liberal policies has caused capital flight and resource extraction rather than bringing the promised gold from abroad?

– Do you know that EPAs has no monetary rewards in the form of better domestic investments and debt relief to the ESA countries?

The nature of agriculture in the ESA region is often substantially different to that found in the EU - a major food exporting region.

– Do you know that in ESA, millions of small farmers produce food crops on small plots of land, with minimal technology and government subsidies?

– Do you know that ESA farmers’ ability to sell on the local market can be undercut by rapid trade liberalization that opens the way to surges of cheap, often subsidized imports?

– Do you know that the imbalances in the agricultural cluster pitted ESA farmers (including peasants) against those from the EU, who on average receives 100 times more in agricultural support?

Survival in agricultural markets depends less on comparative advantage than on comparative access to subsidies.

– Do you know that liberalizing local food markets in the face of such unequal competition is not a prescription for improving efficiency, but a recipe for the destruction of livelihoods on a massive scale?

– Do you know that EU is refusing to talk about its own highly distorting and protectionist Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which already today causes huge damage to poor people?

– Do you know that cheap import of EU subsidized farm products causes de-agriculturalization and demands for food import even by former net food exporters?

ESA firms lack the brand names, skills and marketing structures thatEuropean companies enjoy. The same firms have also no access to the range of government support often provided by rich countries in the form of tax incentives, research and development funding or concessional credit.

– Do you know that ESA countries face huge supply-side constraints and many countries are not even able to fill to days quotas to the EU markets?

– Do you know that ESA countries face unreliable provision of public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run

down roads and railways); weak institutional and policy frameworks (leading to fluctuating exchange rates and high inflation); labour productivity (arising from poor education, health and housing provision)?

– Do you know that ESA producers have extremely weak market institutions, with no robust financial and banking systems; and have weak functioning legal frameworks?

– Do you know that EU is not eager to address the fundamental structural economic challenges cited above?

– Do you know that EU is pushing for market access in vital sectors of the ESA economies including industry, agriculture, services and manufacturing?

– Do you know that many poor ESA countries will open their sectors to a wholesale competition while at the same time EU is resisting to discuss its on highly protectionist CAP?

– Do you know that EPAs are pushing for levels and speeds of market opening that will seriously hurt the fragile economies of the ESA region?

The EU_EPA negotiations are fragmenting East and Southern African region.

– Do you know that Tanzania, though a member of the East African Community, is not in the ESA negotiating group?

– Do you know that the ’SADC’ negotiating group does not include four of its original members - namely, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mauritius?

– Do you recall the division of Africa in Berlin in 1884? Is this not what is happening again right in front of our eyes?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) underlined seven sectoral areas, plus the eighth goal on the South-North dialogue.

– Do you know that the EPA negotiations are violating all norms of justice in trade negotiations between rich countries of the EU and the poor countries of Africa?

– Do you know that the outcome of the negotiations will undermine all the other sectoral goals of the MDGs?

 What could parliamentarians do?

Civil Society in Africa has called for a halt to the negotiations to give Eastern and Southern African countries the time to prepare and analyze if there are any added value for them in entering the FTAs with the EU. At the moment this is a totally unexplored field of knowledge. A little aid here and a little funding there can violate
the entire production system for our countries and our children.

– Do you know that our governments are so weak to the EU as donors that they have difficulties with rejecting the EU demands?

– Do you know that the democratic consultations between the negotiators, regional secretariats, the Capitals and the Parliaments are so weak that there is almost no substantial elaborations about

what to do with the requests from the EU?

– Do you know that the civil society organizations in the EU have on that basis started the No to the EPAs Campaign, to try to lift the burden of the EU economic crisis off the shoulders of the African countries?

– Do you know that only the Parliaments, accountable to the people that voted for them, can back government positions of putting a halt to these highly unequal and unjust EPA-negotiations?

WE therefore please ask you to urge governments to declare the State of Emergency on EPAs because they are a disaster to our economies and the people.

WAKE UP AFRICA! WAKE UP TO THE SECOND RE-PARTITIONING OF AFRICA! WAKE

UP TO THE REALITY OF DE-INDUSTRIALISATION AND FURTHER IMPOVERSIHMENT

OF AFRICA! IT IS TIME TO TAKE A STAND!