The Evian Group in collaboration with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington and Brussels, the Groupe d'Economie Mondiale, based at Sciences-Po in Paris, the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, Oxfam International, and leading academics at Oxford, among others, is convening an emergency meeting on the IMD campus in Lausanne on Thursday 13 December to provide light and hopefully guidance and direction in respect to the EPAs. The individuals and institutions concerned have independently undertaken research on the development and trade implications of the EPAs and the conclusions are overwhelmingly cause for considerable concern. In a very simplified nutshell, the development implications of the EPAs, depending on country and region, range from the negligible to the possibly quite harmful. The trade distortions that will result, however, are especially cause for alarm. The main beneficiaries, so far as we can see, will be inefficient EU firms that will be able to extract rent from ACP consumers and at the expense of more efficient producers from third countries. The global trading system has become both fragile and convoluted as things stand, the EPAs, so far as we can judge, would make matters considerably worse. These are our conclusions on the basis of our analyses. We are of course open to learning of all other studies, including ones that may reach very different conclusions.

Whatever the case, however, while we are aware of the alleged impending dead-line, the WTO membership has become notorious for missing deadlines and this, we strongly believe, is one that must be missed!

Given the controversy and anxiety that the EPAs have generated in ACP societies and the stakes at hand, this is clearly an issue that demands the brightest possible light and the highest possible level of transparency in order to generate an environment of trust, which has been significant by its absence; indeed the opposite, mistrust, has recently reigned as the Evian Group has frequently lamented. The meeting will be based on the assumption that participants are keen to exchange ideas in a dispassionate manner, to be frank and eager to find solutions, especially ones that will provide the maximum development effects.

Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Founding Director, the Evian Group

Results of the meeting will be posted on this website, watch this space!

Ressources

In the Press

Barbara Stocking, Africa-European Union Trade Seismic Rupture, theworldtoday.org, Chatham House, January 2008

Glenys Kinnock MEP, Commission must be urged to heed ACP trade fears, FT, 13 December 2007

Alan Beattie & Andrew Bounds, How Europe’s trade talks with poor former colonies became mired in mistrust, FT, 12 December 2007

Peter Mandelson, Brussels cannot offer ACP unilateral trade access, FT, 12 December 2007

Jeepers creepers, look at those EPAs, FT Editorial, 11 December 2007

Andrew Bounds, Poorer nations face import tariff rise as EU refuses to budge, FT, 11 December 2007

Media Release on EPA between the EU and the SADC, The National Development and Labour Council, 5 December 2007

Africa is being rushed into potentially unfair EU trade agreements, DATA, 29 November 2007

Making trade work for Africa - An African Initiative, DATA, 29 November 2007

Ivorian banana growers push for new EU trade agreement, Reuters Africa, 24 November 2007

EU trade deal could hit African states' budgets – IMF, Reuters Africa, 23 November 2007

Alan Beattie, EU Trade Pressure on Poor Nations Criticised, Financial Times, 21 November 2007

Madeleine Bunting, The EU is bullying the world's poor to rush into a dubious deal on trade, Guardian Unlimited, 19 November 2007

TRADE-GHANA: ''EU Will Be the Main Beneficiary of the EPAs'', IPSnews , 15 November 2007

Abdoulaye Wade, Europe-Africa: cooperation in breakdown, Le Monde, 15 November 2007

Peter Mandelson & Louis Michel, This is not a poker game: Critics of the EU's trade agreements are gambling with livelihoods in the developing world, The Guardian, 31 October 2007

Related publications on EPAs

Bartels Lorand, The Trade and Development Policy of the European Union, The European Journal of International Law Vol. 18 no. 4 © EJIL 2007

Bouet Antoine, Laborde David & Mevel Simon, Searching for an alternative to Economic Partnership Agreements, IFPRI Brief [48], December 2007

Collier Paul and Nicolaidis Kalypso, EPAs: an Opportunity or Car Crash?, November 2007

Delpeuch, Claire, "One minute to Midnight: Is there still time to rethink EPAs?", GMF Policy Brief, October 2007

Draper Peter, EU-Africa Trade Relations: The Political Economy of Economic Partnership Agreements, VOX, 12 August 2007

ECDPM Report, EPA Negotiations: where do we stand?, 5 December 2007

Messerlin Patrick & Delpeuch Claire, EPAs: A Plan ‘A+’, GEM Working Paper, 19 November 2007

Meyn Mareike & Stevens Christopher, ACP-EU Economic Partnership Agreement, Final Report Commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat, November 2007

Meyn Mareike, Spin or reality? The state of play on EPAs, ODI blog, 28 November 2007

Meyn Mareike, The end of Botswana beef exports to the European Union?, ODI Policy Brief, September 2007

Meyn Mareike, The end of current EU preferences for Namibia: Economic and social impacts, ODI Policy Brief, May 2007

Oxfam, Oxfam International Concerns With Initialled ‘Interim EPA’ Texts, 7 December 2007

Stevens Christopher & Kennan Jane, ACP Tariff Policy Space in EPAs:
The possibilities for ACP countries to exempt products from liberalisation commitments under asymmetric EPAs, ODI, July 2007

Stevens Christopher, EPAs: Distinguishing what we know from
what we don’t know, ODI blog, 30 November 2007

Stevens Christopher, From North–South to South–South: the Commonwealth as a trade deal broker after EPAs, ODI, Keynote presentation, CHOGM 2007 People’s Forum, Kampala, 18–20 November 2007

Scollay Robert, Message to Jean-Pierre Lehmann on EPAs, 3 December 2007

Merrien François-Xavier, Message to Jean-Pierre Lehmann on EPAs, 10 December 2007