EAC lawmakers call for fresh EPA’s negotiations

East African law makers have asked governments of the respective five member countries comprising the block to scrap the interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) signed between the East African Community (EAC) and the European Union (EU) late 2007 suggesting instead that a fresh round of negotiations begins. Speaking during the recently held 4th Annual Inter-Parliamentary Relations Seminar in Kigali, the parliamentarians declared that the EPA’s Framework that was introduced between the EAC and EU last November was a raw deal and poorly negotiated. The controversial EPA’s were signed in Lisbon after East African governments were allegedly coerced with the threat of collapse of the Cotonou Pact governing trade and aid relations between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. ACP countries benefit from EU aid through the European Development Fund (EDF), though critics argue that much of it is lost through unfair trade practices. The EU through the EPA’s is proposing to negotiate World Trade Organisation (WTO), compatible trading arrangements, that will in ten years liberalise, 90 percent of ACP markets. While the EU is pushing the poor ACP countries (in the EPA’s negotiations) to open up and compete with rich countries, it is also becoming more protectionist and refuses to reform its controversial Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It is in this regard that the legislators are now demanding broader consultation in EAC Common Market negotiations and that their concerns be considered before the final signing of the Comprehensive EPA’s. Their concerns include the flexibility and exceptions in market access, periodic and specific reviews, dispute settlements and relevant institutions. The new round of negotiations the legislators pointed out should take place before June 2009. The Legislators highlighted the “rapid developments” in East Africa and said that the EAC now should focus more on South-South co-operation, which they consider to be more advantageous than that with the West. In order for the new negotiations to take place in a more transparent manner, the parliamentarians recently recommended that all EAC partner states assent to the East African Joint Trade Negotiation Bill. Dr. Francis Mangeni, a consultant on African and international trade policy, said that the EU is once again moulding the developing world in its own image in order to negotiate itself into a permanent preferential place that assures its continued influence in order to secure an edge over competitors for resources, services and goods. The seminar, officially opened by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, brought together over 200 participants who included all the 45 East African Legislative Assembly members; 15 Members of Parliament from each of the five EAC National Assemblies; East African ministers, senior government and EAC officials and 15 members of the Economic Community of Western African States’ Parliament. It had been called to discuss the roles of national and regional legislators in the EAC integration process, ongoing negotiations on the EAC Common Market Protocol and the EU-EAC EPA’s. EALA Speaker, Abdirahin Haithar Abdi, said parliaments should be constantly appraised of the progress and developments on the ongoing negotiations of the EAC Common Market Protocol and the EPA negotiations. Ends